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Journey to Death

A Lucy Hall Mystery by Leigh Russell

Journey to Death by Leigh Russell

Review: Twenty-two-year-old Lucy Hall needs to get away. Recently separated from her live-in — and unfaithful — fiancé of two years, Lucy's parents George and Angela talk her into taking a vacation with them to the Seychelles, to leave her worries and her cheating ex behind. But it's at all the vacation they had dreamed of, in Journey to Death, the first mystery in this series by Leigh Russell.

Back in the 1970s, George had worked as an accountant at the Garden of Eden Hotel on Mahé, the largest of the Seychelles islands. He lived in a small white house where he was able to sit on his veranda and admire the beauty of the ever changing colors of the Indian Ocean at sunset. Now, thirty years later he and his family are vacationing at the same hotel where George worked. He is thrilled to be able to show Lucy and her mother the beauty of the place he once called home. George was about Lucy's age back in 1977 when he met and fell in love with a young woman named Veronique. He was happier than he had ever been and he was completely oblivious to the political pressure beginning to build up in the island nation. When a new regime came to power, he was deported and forced to leave immediately, leaving Veronique behind; he never spoke to her again. He wrote to her but she never answered any of his many letters. George had never told Angela about his romance with Veronique; it was history and it was over. But the past has a way of catching up with the present, as the Hall family soon learns.

The characters of Journey to Death are well-cast, the setting idyllic, and the storyline rather chilling at times, but these elements don't always work harmoniously together. Lucy Hall, in particular, seems at odds with herself. She's intellectually curious, educated, and apparently ambitious, but hasn't yet found her path in life, though she aspires to become a private investigator. All well and good, except that really doesn't work here other than as a plot convenience. It's a bit of a shaky start for this first in a series, but on balance it is an interesting mystery with some startling twists and turns.

Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of Journey to Death.

Acknowledgment: Thomas & Mercer provided an ARC of Journey to Death for this review.

Review Copyright © 2016 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved

Location(s) referenced in Journey to Death: Seychelles

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Journey to Death by Leigh Russell

Journey to Death by A Lucy Hall Mystery

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Format: Trade Paperback
ISBN-13: 978-1-5039-5192-1
Publication Date:
List Price: $15.95

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Page Author: Lance Wright
Site Publisher: Mysterious Reviews

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