From the TBR Pile: Review: Dead Reckoning by Lea O'Harra

Dead Reckoning by Lea O'Harra

Publisher: Sharpe Books-UK (Sept 29, 2022)

Category: Crime Fiction, Family Life, Kidnapping

Tour dates: January 5-31, 2023

ISBN: Coming Soon

ASIN: B0BGYG3HGX Available in Print and ebook, 289 pages

Indiana, January 2010. It’s a hot summer’s day in 1984 when twelve-year-old Gilly and her friend Sally find a dead new-born in a shoebox in the cemetery of their tiny town. Deciding to keep their discovery a secret, they bury the body in Gilly’s yard. The results are disastrous. Flowers are mysteriously left on strollers. Two local children disappear and end up dead. A suspect is arrested and confesses, blaming the deaths on the girls’ having taken the dead baby. Gilly grows up but is haunted by what’s happened. As a young woman, she flees the town and its memories, going all the way to Japan. Returning with her Japanese husband Toshi to attend her mother’s funeral, Gilly finds the past is not past. She’s threatened, and someone is putting flowers on strollers again. When another child is abducted, Gilly knows she must discover the truth about what happened all those years ago before more lives are lost.

My thoughts:

Dead Reckoning is a slow burn mystery. Gilly travels to her home town after the death of her mother. Being at home brings back memories from her childhood and not the good ones. The person responsible for the deaths of a couple of children has been let out of prison and another child has been abducted.

I thought this was a good mystery. It did flow a little slow for my taste, but I enjoyed it. We get peeks into what happened in 1984 through excerpts from Gilly's old diary. I liked those parts the best. The solution was a surprise. The only thing I didn't care for were the characters. I had a hard time connecting with any of them. I thought at first Toshi was Gilly's son from the way he acted. Aside from the msytery, I thought this was a good look at family and old friendships and how they evolve over time. Yet how we can also fall into the same patterns from childhood when we get back together with them. I would recommend this one.

About Lea O'Harra

Lea O’Harra has published three crime fiction novels set in rural modern-day Japan: Imperfect Strangers (2015); Progeny (2016); and Lady First (2017). These comprise the so-called ‘Inspector Inoue Murder Mystery’ series originally published by Endeavour Press (UK). She has also had a story included in Best Asian Crime Fiction published by Kitaab Press (Singapore) in 2020. In the spring of 2022 Sharpe Books reissued the Inoue mystery series and, in September 2022, published Lea O’Harra’s fourth novel, Dead Reckoning, a stand-alone set in her tiny hometown in the American Midwest. Website: http://leaoharra.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/leaoharra/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wendy.nakanishi/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leaoharracrimewriter/ Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/wendy19542012/