Daryl Anderson

I received an early reviewer copy of Ghosts Walk the Shenandoah in return for an honest review. I had not read The Murderer's Apprentice, the first book in Daryl Anderson's Murderer's Apprentice series so went back to fill in the beginning of main character's Dara Burke's story. I was hooked and headed right into Anderson's second book.

Burke is a feisty girl in the first book and has grown into a somewhat sullen but still feisty teenager in the second. In this book, Dara finds herself far away from her beloved Baltimore, visiting the small town of Black Springs, West Virginia, with her aunt to attend a family wedding. Pretty quickly things turn ugly as Dara meets the wild, somewhat strange daughter of her aunt's fiancé. When he is murdered, Dara moves into detective mode, drawing on what she learned three years before when she solved a series of grisly murders in her hometown, including the ability to commune with the dead. As before, Dara finds herself and her family in grave danger.

The supernatural elements add an element of deeper mystery to this story that had me turning pages as trying to work out the murderer and the other secrets that haunt Black Springs. Dara is a fearless and fascinating young woman and we also get in depth looks at the other characters as well, especially her aunt who travels with her.… (lisätietoja)

Let me explain my review title and the five stars.
I have recently stumbled across the Japanese word "tsundoku" meaning accumulation of an unreasonable amount of books with a high unlikelihood of them all getting read. If I stopped right now, I doubt I'd get through all the books I have in my "want to read" piles.
But I recently attended the first annual Sunshine State Book Festival in Gainesville, Florida and was booth mates with Daryl Anderson. So the book jacket winked at me all day long and I like murder mysteries. Even better, this one is set here locally in Florida. I found Anderson to be quippy, funny, engaging and passionate about literature in general. So at the end of the day, I was delighted that she was amenable to doing a book trade.
With piles of books in the living room, the porch and beside the bed, competing against library books with rapidly approaching due dates, I reached for this one. I know how precious a review is. And somehow I knew I'd enjoy this book. I sure enjoyed talking with the author.
I can't say how many mysteries I have started and then put down because there were just too many characters up front to sort out and I just couldn't find my way into the setting or the plot. This one sucked me in right away. Big plus. I was pleasantly surprised that Addie, the main character, is from the hard-boiled Mikey Spillane school of detection; a whiskey-drinking, cussing and feisty sort of straight-shooter. Edgy. A bit gritty, but likeable. Another plus. Normally, I prefer escapist cozy mysteries to procedurals, but there was no trouble sticking with this one. Had to find out what was going on. Well plotted and engaging, this book had me thinking four stars by the midway point. But the extra bonus that bumps this up a notch for me is the writing as craft --and Anderson has the gift of the spicy simile. "Dolores reached for the coffee the way a drowning man might reach for a life preserver." "Nurse Grace, who looked like she wanted to grill me like a steak on the Fourth of July." There are LOTS of these-- little gems that made me stop and smile, thinking, "well now that was clever."
How delicious that the next book in the series awaits me! And it too will be bumped to the top of the heap!… (lisätietoja)

If you loved the 60’s and are looking for a murder mystery that keeps you guessing, this one is for you! Dara is a baseball fan and quite the tomboy. She’s best friends with a boy named Fran, has a little brother named Alvey who she’s quite protective of, and may have a bit of paranormal ability. Half the story is from her POV. There’s a bit of amateur sleuthing in there… and a lot of being a kid in the 60’s and baseball. Dara LOVES her baseball.

Stan is our other POV character and he is working to solve the mystery of what’s going on with some murders going on around Baltimore. The half of the novel from Stan’s POV was well written and a good procedural, focused on the cases of young boys who have fallen prey to a serial killer. In the sections that focus on Stan, author Daryl Anderson demonstrates that she knows her stuff, taking us through interesting discussions of poisons, motives, and police procedure.

There were large sections where the story slowed because of extraneous detail. On the one hand, I loved how this period work gave us such a lovely flash back to the 60’s. But at times it did feel as if the story paused for so long to describe every era-appropriate food, TV show or event that the plotting got lost. There were several plot threads that were raised at points throughout the novel that got dropped. Dara’s paranormal abilities are raised at the beginning of the novel… and then that plot thread disappears.

The bigger problem, however, for me, is including the graphic on page sexual assault of a child near the end of the book when it was not critical to the plot and then not including any reaction or follow up. Had a sexual assault of a 12-year-old from the child’s POV been an important part of the plot, something that the child reacts to, something that shapes them emotionally, something that has consequences later… then I could have understood the scene. As written, it happens. Dara declares Gary is “a bad man.” And then for the rest of the book it’s as if it never happened at all. The show goes on! This feels harmful in terms of how sexual assault should be talked about and written and poorly affected my opinion of the book in the last 15% of it.

Trigger Warnings: Graphic sexual assault of a child … (lisätietoja)