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Cheri Reviews Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner

Over the past several years, I’ve discovered that I love British crime/detective/mystery books. L-O-V-E them. The language, the settings, and the cultural differences from Americans make them my go-to books when I’m looking for something new to read. It was for this reason that I first noticed Missing, Presumed on NetGalley. I received an ARC many months ago and started it but just wasn’t in the right frame of mind so I put it away. Once I put it down, I mostly forgot about it. Until, that is, I saw the audio book was narrated by Juanita McMahon, who I love. That was enough motivation to get me to jump in with both feet, er, with both ears.

There were no false starts with the audio and I had a tough time pausing for life’s little interruptions like feeding and caring for my child and sleep. It wasn’t that the action was non-stop or that the case was so incredibly engaging, but that the development of the characters and story that had me hooked. And Ms. McMahon, of course.

Here’s the blurb:

At thirty-nine, Manon Bradshaw is a devoted and respected member of the Cambridgeshire police force, and though she loves her job, what she longs for is a personal life. Single and distant from her family, she wants a husband and children of her own. One night, after yet another disastrous Internet date, she turns on her police radio to help herself fall asleep—and receives an alert that sends her to a puzzling crime scene.

Edith Hind—a beautiful graduate student at Cambridge University and daughter of the surgeon to the Royal Family—has been missing for nearly twenty-four hours. Her home offers few clues: a smattering of blood in the kitchen, her keys and phone left behind, the front door ajar but showing no signs of forced entry. Manon instantly knows that this case will be big—and that every second is crucial to finding Edith alive.

The investigation starts with Edith’s loved ones: her attentive boyfriend, her reserved best friend, her patrician parents. As the search widens and press coverage reaches a frenzied pitch, secrets begin to emerge about Edith’s tangled love life and her erratic behavior leading up to her disappearance. With no clear leads, Manon summons every last bit of her skill and intuition to close the case, and what she discovers will have shocking consequences not just for Edith’s family but for Manon herself.

Suspenseful and keenly observed, Missing, Presumed is a brilliantly twisting novel of how we seek connection, grant forgiveness, and reveal the truth about who we are.

I won’t give any spoilers away but I will say that, while I had a good idea of what happened to Edith, I didn’t know why until it was revealed. I was a bit disappointed in the way the case panned out but I did still enjoy the journey. For me, the big draw was the human aspect of the book. Was Manon whiny at times and did I want to smack her for some of her choices regarding dating and relationships? Sure, but some of those scenes and decisions helped to flesh out her insecurities and desires and needs. I also enjoyed learning more about the other POV characters.

I generally hate when anyone compares a book to the standard The Girl on the Train or Gone Girl so I’m sorry to do that here. But I only want to compare them with regard to the dark feel of the stories and the way I felt very much in the heads of some of the characters. The biggest difference, I think, between those books and this one is that not everyone in Missing, Presumed is an awful human being who I would like to see harmed. There were very few instances of me seriously wanting to hurt characters in Missing, Presumed.

I certainly look for the next book by Ms. Steiner.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with the ebook to read and review. And thanks to Juanita McMahon for finally getting me to experience it.

You can download a sample or purchase Missing, Presumed by clicking here.

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Cheri Reviews A Quiet Death by Cari Hunter


Cari Hunter is my go-to author for lesbian fiction’s mystery/thriller category. Each and every one of her books is engaging, fast-paced, well thought out, and well written. A Quiet Death, the third in the Dark Peak series, is no different.

Here’s the blurb from Amazon:

In book three in the Dark Peak series, things are looking up for Detective Sanne Jensen and Dr. Meg Fielding. Dating each other seems to be working, their families are behaving themselves, and the worst of the post-Christmas crime wave is over.

The discovery of a Pakistani girl’s body out on the moors changes all that. No one knows who she is, who hurt her, or how she came to be there. As pressure mounts on East Derbyshire Special Ops for a quick resolution, it becomes ever more apparent that the case won’t provide one.

With the Pakistani community closing ranks, and threads of suspicion reaching farther than anyone could have predicted, the investigation leaves Sanne facing an ordeal she may not survive.

A Quiet Death takes place pretty soon after the events in Cold to the Touch and finds Sanne and Meg happily engaged in committed coupledom. As we knew they would be, they’re perfectly suited and there’ll be no drama between them so no worries there. The ups and downs in this book are solidly focused on the case at hand. Hunter doesn’t shy away from difficult topics and A Quiet Death deals with one that, personally, is one of the toughest to read about: trafficking women for sex. I can handle lots of graphic details when reading mysteries and thrillers but rape is a bit gut-wrenching for me. Luckily, I didn’t have to worry about that. The author does a great job of letting the reader know what’s going on but there are no graphic descriptions. And I didn’t notice until very late in the book that they weren’t there. The case is the thing and I was completely wrapped up in the thoughts and actions of the detectives. The EDSOP team was a joy to witness and the addition of a POV for Sanne’s boss, Eleanor, gave me even more insight into the case as well as some of the characters. There was never a point when I wanted to get away from her POV and back to Sanne or Meg’s.

I heavily suspected that I’d enjoy this book since I’ve not yet been disappointed by anything written by the author and I was right. Hunter has not only a talent for bringing her characters to life and dropping the reader into the scene but also for balancing dark, deadly serious story lines with levity and humor so the reader doesn’t get lost in despair over the heartbreaking cases. I look forward to reading whatever she comes up with next.

You can download a sample or purchase A Quiet Death by clicking here.

I received a copy of the book from the publisher through NetGalley.

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Cheri Reviews The Trapped Girl by Robert Dugoni

I had pretty high hopes for this episode of the Tracy Crosswhite series. It started out with someone stumbling upon a body in a crab trap – even though I had some problems with a sophomore in high school having $1500 saved up to buy a boat – and with Tracy’s team working together to solve the case. We were even teased with Katie Pryor maybe being a part of this one (she’s not).

Unfortunately, this is likely my least favorite of the full-length books in this series. I know that some of the things that bothered me may be edited out. I read an ARC a few months before the scheduled publication date (I’m writing this review in the beginning of October). But the things that didn’t work for me the most are directly related to the handling of Johnny Nolasco and the plot of the story, particularly the who-dunnit and why.

Of course, I can’t give away any spoilers but what I can say is that I was left scratching my head and re-reading sections to see if I missed something. I was pretty happy at 70% through, I still wasn’t completely sure who was bad or good because there were at least two plausible options. But around the 80% mark, my frustration and disbelief grew. That continued until the end when all I could do was shake my head and be glad it was over.

I liked the idea of the story and think it had potential to be an interesting book – the best book in the series, maybe. There was no action or edge of your seat moments, but the investigation and inter-departmental politics were interesting. There were great team interactions and we got to watch Tracy and Dan move forward with their relationship. Unfortunately, all that good stuff couldn’t make up for the way the actual crime was handled. It was very disappointing for me.

I received The Trapped Girl from the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

You can download a sample or purchase The Trapped Girl by clicking here.

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Cheri Reviews The Widow by Fiona Barton (Goodreads Review)


I was browsing the available audio books on Overdrive and remembered seeing The Widow being shelved by a few of the people I follow on Goodreads. I didn’t know what it was about except it was in the mystery category and that was good enough for me at that moment.

The story was interesting and engaging. For anyone who is hesitant about reading it for fear of graphic descriptions of crimes, have no fear, there aren’t any. The POVs switch between several people who are involved in the crime and the investigation so there’s a lot of information to absorb but it never felt overwhelming. This isn’t a fast-paced “who dunnit” but more of a slow reveal.

I definitely enjoyed the book but didn’t feel any sort of urgency in reading it. I could have easily set it aside and probably not thought about it again. The widow was certainly an interesting character. I would have liked to have spent more time in her head. I wanted to get back to her whenever another character’s POV took over.

If you’re looking for a lighter mystery that deals with potentially upsetting themes but doesn’t go into graphic detail, this might be for you.

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Cheri Reviews Before the Fall by Noah Hawley


While poking around on NetGalley some months ago, I saw Before the Fall and thought it sounded interesting. The fact that the author wrote on the TV show Fargo helped in my decision to request the book since some friends have said good things about it. By the time I got around to reading it, I had forgotten everything the blurb said except there was a plane crash and a man saved a little boy. I also listened to the audio book instead of reading the ebook. One of the benefits of being terribly delinquent in NetGalley reading is that the audio books are sometimes available at my public library.

The blurb on Amazon is pretty long but here it is if you’re interested:

On a foggy summer night, eleven people–ten privileged, one down-on-his-luck painter–depart Martha’s Vineyard on a private jet headed for New York. Sixteen minutes later, the unthinkable happens: the plane plunges into the ocean. The only survivors are Scott Burroughs–the painter–and a four-year-old boy, who is now the last remaining member of an immensely wealthy and powerful media mogul’s family.

With chapters weaving between the aftermath of the crash and the backstories of the passengers and crew members–including a Wall Street titan and his wife, a Texan-born party boy just in from London, a young woman questioning her path in life, and a career pilot–the mystery surrounding the tragedy heightens. As the passengers’ intrigues unravel, odd coincidences point to a conspiracy. Was it merely by dumb chance that so many influential people perished? Or was something far more sinister at work? Events soon threaten to spiral out of control in an escalating storm of media outrage and accusations. And while Scott struggles to cope with fame that borders on notoriety, the authorities scramble to salvage the truth from the wreckage.

Amid pulse-quickening suspense, the fragile relationship between Scott and the young boy glows at the heart of this stunning novel, raising questions of fate, human nature, and the inextricable ties that bind us together.

I just read the blurb again and I have to say there really wasn’t any pulse-quickening suspense and I didn’t think the relationship between Scott and the boy was fragile or at the heart of the novel. Scott was certainly at the heart of the novel but after the crash, he didn’t have that much contact with the kid. What was at the heart of the novel, for me, was the way the right-wing, Fox News-like anchor (think Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh had a love child) twisted the facts of the story, and the law, to advance his own agenda. Sensationalism and ego were all that mattered to him and maybe it was just a bit too close to reality for me. I spent a lot of time grinding my teeth or talking out loud during his sections.

Along with finding out about what had been going on with the passengers and crew before the crash and what Scott and a few others were up to after the crash, there was also the mystery of what happened to cause the plane to drop out of the sky. There was really no point in the book prior to the reveal that I had it completely right. So not only were the characters well done, the mystery was well done, too. And while some words and phrases were used a bit too often for my liking and some scenes seemed to drag or made me wonder why they were included at all, in general, the writing and language were enjoyable. The moving back and forth between before the crash and after worked very well. I was never irritated, that I can remember, when a time or POV shift happened and I liked the author’s choice of omniscient POV. I’d definitely read another book by the author. All things considered, I’m a satisfied reader!

You can download a sample or purchase Before the Fall by clicking here.

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Cheri Reviews The 7th Canon by Robert Dugoni

When I saw a new stand-alone novel by Robert Dugoni on NetGalley.com, I couldn’t help but click “request.” I had already finished the first 3.5 (three novels and a short story) in his Tracy Crosswhite series and enjoyed most of them quite a bit. You can check out my review for the first in the series here.

The thing that I’ve discovered about Dugoni is that he can be very hit or miss with the execution of his stories. Sometimes they can be fast paced and intense and other times slow or have convoluted plots where detectives are able to deduce solutions out of what feels like nowhere. I’ve learned to be cautious with my expectations when it comes to this author. His newest release, The 7th Canon, was on the fast paced and intense side and it may be my favorite of the Dugoni books that I’ve read.

Here’s the blurb from Amazon if you care to read it:

In San Francisco’s seamy Tenderloin district, a teenage street hustler has been murdered in a shelter for boys. And the dedicated priest who runs the struggling home stands accused. But despite damning evidence that he’s a killer—and worse—Father Thomas Martin stands by his innocence. And attorney Peter Donley stands with him.

For three years Donley has cut his legal teeth in his uncle’s tiny, no-frills firm, where people come before profits. Just as Donley is poised to move on to a lucrative dream job, the shocking case lands in his lap, and he must put his future on hold while putting his courtroom skills to the test. But a ruthless DA seeking headlines and a brutal homicide cop bent on vengeance have their own agendas. Now, as he unearths the dirty secrets surrounding the case, Donley must risk his neck to save his client’s life…and expose the face of true evil.

I found myself liking Peter Donely quite a bit. He’s not the idealistic, young attorney out to save the world but a father and husband trying to figure out how to make a better life for his wife and toddler son. Once I got past the first few chapters, I struggled to put the book down because the story kept unfolding and I was completely caught up in not only the case, but learning about the lives of Donely and the private detective, Frank Ross, both of whom have dark days in their pasts that won’t let them move on.

At the end of the book, I was satisfied with the outcome of the case and where the characters ended this leg of their journey. If this ends up being a series, I would happily pick up book two. There is an audio version of this one but I’ve not heard any of it so I can’t speak to the narrator. I read this one with a combination of my eyeballs and a text-to-speech app.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

You can download a sample or purchase The 7th Canon by clicking here.