Vicky Delany’s “Constable Molly Smith” series gives a very satisfying cast of characters for her murder mysteries.  Set in western Canada, the people in the community know each other well, and know their histories.  Molly Smith’s real first name is Moonlight, given to her by her hippie parents.  By the time of this fifth book in the series, her father has passed away, and her mother is flirting with her boss.  Molly is still new in her job, and she does not want to make a bad impression, so she is worried that things will get complicated if her mother and her boss start getting involved.  The mystery of the novel starts when some old human bones turn up in the local woods, and these are traced back to a man who disappeared 15 years ago.  The man’s wife and son still live in town.  They are both reclusive, but the son is an artist who produces disturbing paintings and talks about the ugliness of reality, complaining that people are not willing to recognize the truth about the real world.  The dead man’s daughter has left town; it turns out that she works as an escort, having sex with wealthy men and then extorting money from them.  So the man’s disappearance has left a family who live on the dark side.  As the police try to solve this 15-year-old case, they have to work out whether the man would have had a motive to leave his family and who would have a motive to kill him.  The clues are rather heavy-handed, and the police overlook some obvious leads until late on in the novel, but their mistakes just make the story more believable.  While the tone of the writing is light, there’s plenty of sex and violence here, which might make some listeners more reluctant play the audiobook out loud when other people can overhear.  The reading of the unabridged book by Carrington MacDuffie is great: she brings out the humor and has plenty of energy. 

Links:

• Author website
• Blackstone Audio

© 2011 Christian Perring        

Christian Perring, Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York