Friday , March 29 2024
A short, highly enjoyable mystery.

Book Review: Judgement Fire by Marilyn Meredith

Judgement Fire is a sharp little mystery that will keep readers guessing until the end. In the small town of Bear Creek, a mountain community in the southern Sierra, a battered woman is murdered.

Is the killer her abusive husband? Or maybe her own son, who publicly claimed he hated her? Or perhaps her nosy and suspicious-looking neighbor, who supposedly used to be the woman’s high-school ‘enemy’? Or was the whole thing a mistake, and her husband the intended target of the killer?

As Tempe Crabtree, a young and level-headed police officer with a long black tress down her back, sets out to hunt the killer, she is simultaneously drawn back to her own origins and Native American heritage and uses her roots as a way to help her memory and find the killer.

The prose is crystal clear and the author doesn’t waste time with unnecessary internal dialogues or descriptions. No word is wasted; there’s no clutter, no melodrama. The pace moves quickly and the ‘spiritual’ segments don’t slow down the story. On the contrary, I found that they make the protagonist quite unique.

This is a short, enjoyable novel and one that I gobbled up overnight. This is the latest Tempe Crabtree mystery from award-winning author Marilyn Meredith.

About Mayra Calvani

Mayra Calvani writes fiction and nonfiction for children and adults and has authored over a dozen books, some of which have won awards. Her stories, reviews, interviews and articles have appeared on numerous publications such as The Writer, Writer’s Journal, Multicultural Review, and Bloomsbury Review, among many others. Represented by Serendipity Literary.

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