Book Review: Windy City Dying

Reviewed By: Woodstock - RAM

Windy City Dying     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Eleanor Taylor Bland
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Police Procedural
Series: MacAlister-Jessenovik # 10

The protagonist in Bland's continuing series is refreshingly normal. Marti McAlister is happily married, sharing successful parenting tasks with her husband Ben and their blended family of three nice kids. Marti's mother lives with the family, and through Mamma and her friends we meet an extended community of "church ladies" who provide extra food, emotional support, and friendship to the community at large as well as to Marti and Ben.

Marti works as a cop in a suburb north of Chicago - where the problems of the inner city are close at hand and intrude far too often. The knifing death of a foster child living in a local home kicks off a trail of seemingly unrelated murders. Although the reader understands fairly early on who is behind all the deaths, it is late in the book before Marti, her partner, and the other officers working with her begin to connect all the events.

This long delay in understanding contributes to a nagging lack of focus. However, I admire Bland very much for her presentation of an African American cop, admired by her peers, who works well with her partner, and comes home to a stable happy family. Characters like Marti are few and far between in suspense fiction.

Woodstock - RAM

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