Copyright ©1996, ProMotion, inc.
www@acloserlook.com
Reading a true thriller is like working a puzzle. You start with a table full of pieces which have basically the same color scheme and are about the same size, and you can usually tell which pieces make the border. A good puzzle is challenging. Once started, you can't stop.
Sara Mitchell has written a good puzzle in Trial of the Innocent, the first of a new series Shadow Catchers. In fact it's a puzzle in the 1,000-piece range, and it's very hard to stop reading after you start. Set in the 1890s, the story moves from Richmond, Virginia, to Georgia to New York to England.
The heroine Eve Sheridan cannot shake the feeling that something is very wrong about her sister Rebecca's marriage to Giles Dawson. The couple moves to a cottage in the English countryside, and Eve's suspicions are soon verified by letters from Rebecca that reveal her sense of danger.
As Eve attempts to discover the truth about her sister's husband, she is linked with Alexander MacKay, a detective with the Pinkerton Detective Agency ("the eye that never sleeps"). He is on the trail of swindlers and murderers who have "more fake identities than fleas on a dog."
Rich in idiom and never dull in plot, Trial of the Innocent makes clear the battle between good and evil. The short scenes reveal much about the characters through their actions. Crooks are people who lack "even a snippet of moral conscience" and are "as devious as old Scratch himself." The most compelling part of the writing is that Mitchell never tells too much about her characters. Yet readers know enough about their inner turmoil to feel as they do, even when the character is Giles Dawson or Denham Granville or Dexter Greaves or Dante Gambrielli (who happen to be one and the same).
Mitchell does a good job in drawing together the actions of these many characters in many locales. In the end, all is solved through a journal Eve's sister Rebecca had left, but not before Eve is captured by Giles and then released when the fearful Joe Leoni tracks them down. Never Fear-Alexander Mackay is lurking nearby. It makes a smashing ending to Trial of the Innocent.
Combining mystery and romance with the sense of Christian faith and priciples can be a problem in this kind of book. The hero and heroine in Trial of the Innocent are depicted well and obviously have Christian convictions. Alexander MacKay's are more earnest than Eve Sheridan's. Even they seem a little uneven in their reliance on God.
Readers may hope that future books in the series have a more intriguing and accurate cover. Eve is definitely a redhead, not a brunette, in this daring mystery and compelling love story.
Mitchell has written a number of novels for the Christian market as well as several musical dramas. The wife of a retired U.S. Air Force officer, she has traveled and lived in locations from Colorado to England. She and her family now live in northern Virginia.
Working puzzles-and reading good mysteries-always brings satisfaction.
Copyright ©1996, ProMotion, inc.
www@acloserlook.com