Burn in Hell, A Jake Carrington Mystery by Marian Lanouette

4 columns: a recommended read

Buy it at MuseItUp Publishing or Amazon

MuseItUp Publishing, January, 2013

Blurb

A botched missing person’s case.

A nervous mob boss.

Lt. Jake Carrington’s gut tells him Phil Lucci is being cagey—with good reason. Jake can see this case has been mishandled from the beginning. Sloppy police work? Or does Lucci's hand reach as far as the WPD? It’s Jake’s job to find the answers.

Then Jake meets Kyra Russell, a woman with an unusual job—she runs the local crematory. Despite the heated attraction between them, Jake becomes more and more suspicious of Kyra. Her gambling problem has already cost her a marriage and custody of her son. More than that, she also happens to be friends with Phil Lucci. Kyra assures Jake that it's just coincidence, but Jake's experience and his instincts warn him not to believe in chance. Can Kyra be burning bodies for the mob? If she is, what will Jake do about it?

Review

Having once conjugated complex Latin phrases with dedication and interest, Airmid, Lady of Speed Reading, recognizes in Burn in Hell, a wonderfully enigmatic and pleasingly difficult puzzle to be opened with anticipation and devoured with delight. The story is at once interesting and engaging, alike in many ways to the healing lore Airmid sought to learn from her father. We first meet lovely, red-haired Kyra Russell, funeral director by day, gambler by night. The addiction of gambling holds Kyra like the milky-white latex that sticks fingers together as one gathers dandelion root. Kyra could pull away easily if she were determined, but she chooses to remain, and even binds herself further by accepting an offer from mob boss, Phil Lucci, to cremate the bodies of his hits. Kyra's rationale for choosing this fate rests on her belief that her gambling debts will be erased and she will receive large amounts of cash with which to win back custody of her son, Trevor, from her vindictive ex-husband, Tom. On this same fate-filled day, Kyra first meets Jake Carrington, luscious local man-of-law and defender of vulnerable females, who is emotionally raw from recent abandonment by his fiancée, Mia.

Like the vines of the Partridge Berry which intertwine as they spread over the ground, Kyra and Jake cling to one another in their duress and grief, each entering the relationship with uncommitted intentions that fail as they find in one another the light and hope that comes from the promise of healing emotional wounds. However, like an herbal remedy prepared by the untruthful or unwise, Jake and Kyra's relationship is destined to prove deadly as their enemies conspire against them. The climax of the story builds to an intense ending that is logical, unpredictable and yet disturbing as a cruel justice is served to the stubborn Kyra, and Jake is helpless to protect her from her chosen fate.

Airmid, having lost her favorite brother, Miach, to her father's anger understands the aching emptiness that Jake feels for his long-ago murdered sister. Having spent a year and a day mourning over Miach's burial place to no avail, Airmid sincerely wishes for Jake's sake that he could have found a way to reach Kyra before it was too late. As the story progresses we are also introduced to the mysterious Mia. Airmid wonders what Jake saw in the maddeningly controlling and acerbic woman, who, after a mystifying argument with Jake two months prior, held herself back from contact, as if Jake resided in a patch of stinging nettles and she had no wish to traverse them and endure the pain even though there was a simple remedy at hand for undertaking such a path with success. Not having read the previous book in the series, Airmid remains at a loss to understand Mia, or feel sympathy for the future relationship between Mia and Jake. Some solid evidence such as a flashback or a short summary with highlights and positive notes about their relationship would have helped Airmid believe in Jake's need for and possible reacceptance of Mia.

Within the same root and stem, Airmid grew impatient with waiting until halfway through the story when an actual scene between Kyra and her beloved son, Trevor was presented. Airmid had some difficulty building sympathy for a woman whose motivation for taking a dangerous path was to reunite with her son, but who forgot to call him on the phone and when she did, made but brief conversations with him, while she seemed to put grand effort into pleasing her lover and mob boss, and fighting with her ex-husband. To be placed thusly at the opposite ends of right and wrong would sober many a mother into actions to reclaim a lost child, but Kyra continued to hesitate when opportunity spread itself open at her feet like a bloom of Lady's Mantle. It would be useful in future to take care to build up a solid foundation for a relationship that a character claims as a motivation for her actions and choices. Many herbs for tea can be grown in tame conditions just outside the kitchen door, but it is the wild varieties, found only after a difficult traipse through the bogs, mosses and rocky hillsides that make for the most satisfying taste and the most emotionally true brew.

Airmid confesses that she sped read past the overly-plentiful internal thoughts and questions presented by the main characters. She wonders why the author found it necessary to use questions, dialogue, and direct internal thoughts, often one after the other, and all aimed to present the same information. Do mortal readers require such repetition? "Mortal readers must not readily comprehend what they read." I may never come to understand the minds of mortals. Airmid suggests that the author reconsider the value of using all three of these at once. The glory and the beauty of the author's prose and dialogue is present in such a high degree in this story that a modest amount of pruning would brighten the entire garden of the scene and allow the marvelous words to flourish and, like the tiny blossoms of yarrow, shine forth in glorious storytelling wonder.

Airmid was absolutely delighted with the antagonists in the story from minor but critical characters Joe Dillon and Tom Russell to major and treacherous adversaries, mob boss Phil Lucci and his partner Angelo. Each of these characters was frightening in a realistic way that set Airmid's heart going apace as if she'd sipped too much of the nectar of the Fairy's Glove. Ex-husband Tom is thoroughly disreputable, lacking any sympathy and needing none. Airmid only wished she might have been permitted to rejoice further over the extent of Tom's injuries, but she would have settled for knowing that he spent a long time in hospital, preferably with incompetent and clumsy healers.

The author presented a well-researched and enjoyable world of work from the details of funeral and cremation practices to the particulars of police procedure. Airmid questions whether this story can rightly be cast as a mystery story since the reader was in a position of superior knowledge to the investigating detective. However, that query does not make the story less enjoyable. The author has an excellent ability to build and maintain tension and to present a conflict that appears to have no possible resolution until the very last moments of the story. Above all, Airmid closed the story with a lasting empathy for Jake Carrington, a good and worthy man who is one of the few who hold the ground of justice and mercy against a world of greed, corruption and hate. Airmid plans to read the prior book in the series, If I Fail, and holds great hope of reading more about the world of Jake Carrington.