Among the Departed

Having never read a Vicki Delany I took a leap of faith and plunged into book five of the Molly Smith series. I do not know what I have missed in the previous books, but this one left me with a rather flat feel. After the first two chapters, the book leveled out on a monotonous journey to a rather predictable ending and the lead characters resembled more of a flat Stanley than the multi-dimensional feel that persons of their positions and responsibilities should.

What began as a search for a little boy who wandered away from his families camp in British Columbia, turned into a case of who-done-it when the body of missing Brian Novack shows up after having been missing from his home for fifteen years. You would think that the family would rejoice in the finding, but only one of them is, which tells the reader right off that maybe the family has not been quite as forthcoming with information in the past that they should have. However, that really does not matter, they are a mess and now it is up to Sergeant John Winters of the Trafalgar City Police to sort out what really happened and which person in this town is to blame for the death.

There are multiple sub- story lines going on here and at times, I wondered if Ms Delany was just throwing anything she could at the wall to see what would stick. I found myself asking repeatedly “does that really move the story forward” and found by the end that most of it was there solely for shock factor. Will I continue with the series, no, did I miss anything by not reading the first four books? I cannot see that I would have.