 November 2002
The Parcel Express Murders
by Bernadette Y. Conner
Bernadette Y. Connor's The Parcel Express Murders is cleverly woven into a context where romance, mystery, and intrigue is allowed to play under the backdrop of murder. The author is showing in this sophomoric effort her penchant for writing genre-crossing thrillers where the female is a heroine and the masculine are supporting catalysts to tell a good story without compromising nothing in between.
This is a story about Samoa Tate a psychiatrist who helps patients come to grips with their maladies, but within her own framework there's the need to cope with an absentee father that has a bearing on her personal life. Enter the Dynamic Duo, Detectives Hall Hawkins and Edward Clark assigned the task of solving a double murder case, and a subsequent string of unsolved murders. An interesting sidelight is the fact that Samoa and Detective Clark as love interests are both involved unknowingly in finding the killers, which bodes well in the author introducing subplots that fit well into the result of marrying romance with the mystique of 'who done it', how, and why.
This book could as well been depicted as a romance novel with its steamy love scenes and the charm and wit that both characters, Somoa and Eddie exhibit. So much so, that the secondary characters are truly an adjunct to how the main entities play into interludes that make you wonder whether the mystery should center around the murders, or perhaps what's the mystery behind why Samoa is reluctant to engage Eddie in a more willing fashion as a love interest.
As I read this novel, I couldn't help but to compare it with other deep-seated mysteries I've read in allowing me to truly define them as such. To the author's credit though, she told a good story..., but knowing how I love to unravel and be part of suspenseful intrigue, I was hoping for more twists and turns, and unexpected drama to unfold with the details that were presented here. If the plot would've included the aforementioned it conceivably would have garnered a higher rating from me.
Nevertheless, this indeed is a good read and doesn't suffer at the expense of the prior statement by me. It indeed should pique your interest in this author, and demand more of same. I enjoyed this yarn albeit with wishful yearnings, and would hope that you'd hink of this author as being of mind to write in a challenged mode to bring depth to this genre. There's certainly the potential to do so based on what I've read here, and hope that you read it for yourself!
|
