The Fallen by Jassy Mackenzie, a Mysterious Review.

Review: Jade de Jong just wants a relaxing vacation, learn to scuba dive and spend some quality time with David, only to have her plans shattered from all directions in The Fallen, the third mystery in this series by Jassy Mackenzie.

Jade gets to the resort ahead of David to begin scuba lessons with her instructor, Amanda. She quickly discovers she has a fear of water, not necessarily of drowning but of being trapped underwater. She's determined to overcome her fear, if only to go spend time with David, an expert diver. But David has devastating news for her: his estranged wife is pregnant with his child. It was a mistake, a one time lapse, but Jade doesn't want to hear it. Her attention is soon diverted, though, when Amanda is found murdered soon thereafter. The inexperienced local police are no match for the expertise offered by David, a police superintendent, and Jade, a seasoned private investigator trained in security. Indeed, their most difficult cases are missing persons, of which, they admit, there seem to have been an unusually high number recently. Jade and David set aside — temporarily — their personal problems and work together with the police to determine how a scuba instructor came to be murdered in a quiet seaside resort.

The Fallen is a superbly plotted mystery. A surprising amount of information is actually known to the reader, including the who associated with Amanda's murder, but the why is not revealed until Jade puts the pieces of the puzzle together towards the end. Jade's personal matters — in addition to David's news, she is searching for information about her mother, who died when Jade was very young — are seamlessly integrated into the story, a part of her character development but not intruding on the story itself. What may seem to be a fairly large number of disparate plot points come together in a logical manner in the end, a clear indication of how meticulously plotted this mystery is. The Fallen is a fine example of this author's work, the best of the series to date.

Stolen Lives
Soho Crime (Hardcover), April 2011
ISBN-13: 9781569479094; ISBN-10: 1569479097

Pale Horses
Soho Crime (Hardcover), April 2013
ISBN-13: 9781616952211; ISBN-10: 1616952210

The Fallen

A Jade de Jong Mystery by Jassy Mackenzie