Synopsis (from
the publisher):
The police got the call: a four-year-old boy had been found beaten to
death in the park. But almost as soon as Hart and Tain arrived at the
scene, the case took a strange turn. They found the victim’s
brother hiding in the woods nearby. He said he saw the whole thing and
claims his older sister is the killer. And she’s missing ...
When the boy’s father is notified that his son is dead, his first
response is to hire a high-powered attorney, who seems determined to
create every legal roadblock he can for Hart and Tain. So now the
search is on for the missing girl. But the clock is ticking, and the
case is about to get even stranger.
— ◊ —
— ◊ —
The Frailty of Flesh
A Nolan,
Hart, and Tain Mystery
Sandra
Ruttan
Dorchester (Mass Market Paperback)
ISBN-10: 0-8439-6075-2 (0843960752)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8439-6075-4 (9780843960754)
Publication Date: October 2008
List Price: $7.99
— ◊ —
Review: The
fast-paced action that marked Sandra Ruttan’s debut series novel,
What Burns Within,
continues in volume two, The Frailty
of Flesh. The setting of the British Columbia’s Tri-Cities
of Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody is the same but with a side
trip to the province’s Interior. The three primary protagonists,
RCMP constables Ashlyn Hart, Tain, a First Nation officer, and Craig
Nolan, are back but still recuperating from the after-effects of their
last case when a partner was killed and another wounded. Now,
they’re in search of the killer of four-year-old Jeffrey Reimer
whose 11- year-old brother, Christopher, claims their 16- year-old
sister, Shannon, bludgeoned the boy to death. Like the first book, this
one’s a rapid-fire page-turner from first to last. It ripples
with interagency rivalries, unfolding of past lives, an obstructionist
family and its egomaniacal lawyer, and the duo of Hart and Tain
doggedly running a child-killer to ground while Nolan simultaneously
rakes through the ashes of a cold case file.
Ruttan intricately and seamlessly weaves together details from the
criminal cases and the personal lives and loves of the reserved but
explosive Tain and the other two who are now living together, wrestling
their own demons while they cruise under the radar of their
supervisors, nosy colleagues and an inquisitive female reporter. To
complicate their lives, Craig’s review concerns the long ago case
of a horrific rape-murder for which his father, Steve Daly, was the
original lead RCMP investigator and for which he is now being sued for
wrongful conviction by the perpetrator, coincidentally a client of the
Reimer family’s lawyer. While Nolan’s doing his work,
documents mysteriously go missing both from his desk and his
father’s home. And trying to maintain his and his father’s
integrity leads to multiple tensions between them and to several
revelations about a sordid love triangle that ended a while back in a
death and almost causes one in the present. Hart and Tain have their
own worries over the four-year-old’s murder when the Reimer
family lawyer is the first person the victim’s father calls as
the two initiate their investigations. As they proceed they discover
disturbing facts about various family members and just how close
teenaged friends can be, much less siblings, abused, injured, abducted
or murdered. It’s a storyline filled with twists that ends with
an unpleasant surprise and a couple of more deaths, including one that
hits extremely close to home for Ashlyn.
Ruttan’s creation of an ensemble cast of characters is first
class. The teasing out of details about them from the first book and
into the second provides just the right amount of information both for
readers who have read What Burns
Within and for readers who will want to read it. Their growth
and development as they proceed here is consistent and credible. The
obnoxious family lawyer, a couple of sexist detectives and a pair of
bungling street cops are legitimate targets of reader scorn and
believable sources for Hart’s ongoing frustrations. Even the
politics of policing gets an airing through the machinations that occur
with both the cold case review and the child’s murder. And the
interagency rivalries depicted in What
Burns Within, rage on again, continuing to interfere with the
effectiveness of the justice system and to expose malingerers in an
unfavourable light.
Although Ruttan brings the two cases to a close, she leaves the
personal relationships of her three protagonists under a cloud. It will
be intriguing to see what happens to dispel the overcast as the next
murder mystery gets resolved. But if anyone can bring it all together,
Sandra Ruttan can.
Special thanks to M. Wayne Cunningham (mw_cunningham@telus.net) for contributing his review of The Frailty of Flesh and to for providing of the book for this review.
Review Copyright © 2009 — M. Wayne Cunningham — All Rights Reserved — Reprinted with Permission
Have you read The Frailty of Flesh? How would you rate it?
Mysteries in this series …
What Burns Within
Dorchester (Mass Market Paperback), May 2008
ISBN-10: 0-8439-6074-4 (0843960744)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8439-6074-7 (9780843960747)
The Frailty of Flesh
Dorchester (Mass Market Paperback), October 2008
ISBN-10: 0-8439-6075-2 (0843960752)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8439-6075-4 (9780843960754)
Omnimystery keywords for The Frailty of Flesh ...
Location(s) referenced: Vancounver, British Columbia.
