Hmmm, I see I wrote in my writeup of A Fall in Denver, the second book in this series that the book took a while to get going. This is the third in the series and the same is true. If I was subjecting books to a 50 page test, or even a 100 page test, then I don’t think I would have finished this.

I enjoy the decently plotted scientifically bent plots and Em Hansen solves mysteries using skills she’s learnt as a geologist. I enjoy her mixed-upped-ness and her family failings and her not quite with it attitude to life. There’s lots here that I love but I just don’t like the beginnings.

One of the problems with amateur sleuths is that they have trouble falling over dead bodies all the time in books, something a professional detective can get away with. I do think the author has done an admirable job of making Em’s detective work realistic by tieing the necessary shennaigans into a plot thicker than crude oil but I think something is definitely missing from the beginning of these books. I’d either like a ten page summary of the first hundred pages to get me into the heart of the mystery faster or I’d like a mini-mystery, related to the main one or not, to get tied up earlier in the book.

At the moment I don’t feel much like trying book four but I might give Andrews another chance to write a beginning before I write her off because I really do enjoy her middles and endings.