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A review by liralen
The Vanishing Season by Joanna Schaffhausen
3.0
● This is the third small-town mystery I've read in the last couple weeks in which it's been established that the interrogation room at the police station doesn't have a 'fancy two-way mirror or intercom technology' (224). I'm amused.
● Insufficient proofreading (for shame, St. Martin's):
- 'and it would soon the sizzle would be perfuming the downstairs' (61)
- '"you are stay away from my wife"' (151)
- 'If he was on the job with a badge behind, him he never would have dared' (162)
● I initially misread Sam's age as 'twenty-two years old' instead of 'twenty-two years older', which threw me off for the entire book (since his wife is described as 'middle-aged' (232), Sam's hair is 'an honest salt-and-pepper black' (5), and he 'worked his way up through the ranks in Boston before taking the small town position in Woodbury as chief of police' (5), none of which seem to fit with a twenty-two-year-old!). My fault for misreading, of course. Fun fact: he's 50, not 22.
● I'm reluctant to say that the book pulls punches (partly because I think I use that phrase too often), but I do wish it had followed through on some potential sources of tension.
- Reed is portrayed, at the beginning, as a womanizer and potential alcoholic. He's supposed to be the grizzled old hand battling demons, I guess. But neither women nor alcohol is ever an issue throughout the book: at most, Reed makes the decision to prudently limit his alcohol intake. It ends up feeling as though the book was going for the sense of a grizzled demon-battler without any of the actual complications.
- Ellery is having an affair with her boss, the police chief; this is established from the first chapter. On her part, it's a calculated move: he has more to lose than she does, and he'll be in a great deal more trouble if the affair comes out, so this gives her some power over him. But although their power struggle crops up on and off, it's never in a hugely significant way, and neither of them does more than make idle threats about exposing the affair.
- Ellery stays dead silent about her past for as long as she possibly can. On the one hand this makes sense (who wants to be at the centre of that kind of attention?), but on the other hand... I don't know. A couple problems with her silence, I guess: first, she really does have info that the other characters don't, and she's in a much better place to have insight into the killer's actions than anyone else. Plus, if he's actively targeting her, that's information that the (rest of the) police should have. And second, it has the potential to make her look guilty, especially when. Reed considers her as a suspect, of course, but he pretty quickly 'clears' her (to himself), and after a small hissy fit when they find out her past, Sam and the other police officers get over it. Feels like a missed chance for conflict.
- Reed's profile of the killer is kind of...wrong, no? Which is fine (it's not like it's an exact science), but I'm a little surprised that that doesn't end up being a character-development point.
●
● Overall, it was a solid read but felt a bit standard. I think that's best illustrated in the bit about the interrogation room: not that anything here is done badly, but it's been done before. Scarred heroine who was a killer's only survivor; corrupt police chief; that lack of two-way mirrors; etc.
● Insufficient proofreading (for shame, St. Martin's):
- 'and it would soon the sizzle would be perfuming the downstairs' (61)
- '"you are stay away from my wife"' (151)
- 'If he was on the job with a badge behind, him he never would have dared' (162)
● I initially misread Sam's age as 'twenty-two years old' instead of 'twenty-two years older', which threw me off for the entire book (since his wife is described as 'middle-aged' (232), Sam's hair is 'an honest salt-and-pepper black' (5), and he 'worked his way up through the ranks in Boston before taking the small town position in Woodbury as chief of police' (5), none of which seem to fit with a twenty-two-year-old!). My fault for misreading, of course. Fun fact: he's 50, not 22.
● I'm reluctant to say that the book pulls punches (partly because I think I use that phrase too often), but I do wish it had followed through on some potential sources of tension.
- Reed is portrayed, at the beginning, as a womanizer and potential alcoholic. He's supposed to be the grizzled old hand battling demons, I guess. But neither women nor alcohol is ever an issue throughout the book: at most, Reed makes the decision to prudently limit his alcohol intake. It ends up feeling as though the book was going for the sense of a grizzled demon-battler without any of the actual complications.
- Ellery is having an affair with her boss, the police chief; this is established from the first chapter. On her part, it's a calculated move: he has more to lose than she does, and he'll be in a great deal more trouble if the affair comes out, so this gives her some power over him. But although their power struggle crops up on and off, it's never in a hugely significant way, and neither of them does more than make idle threats about exposing the affair.
- Ellery stays dead silent about her past for as long as she possibly can. On the one hand this makes sense (who wants to be at the centre of that kind of attention?), but on the other hand... I don't know. A couple problems with her silence, I guess: first, she really does have info that the other characters don't, and she's in a much better place to have insight into the killer's actions than anyone else. Plus, if he's actively targeting her, that's information that the (rest of the) police should have. And second, it has the potential to make her look guilty, especially when
Spoiler
her saliva is on the envelopes for the missives she's received- Reed's profile of the killer is kind of...wrong, no? Which is fine (it's not like it's an exact science), but I'm a little surprised that that doesn't end up being a character-development point.
●
Spoiler
I'm kind of disappointed that Reed, and not Ellery, was locked in the closet at the end. Not that I wanted Ellery to suffer more, of course, but...seems like a chance for her to conquer her demons in a big way? Plus, we effectively have Reed being locked in a closet and escaping and saving Ellery's life, which is not necessarily what I'm looking for with a female protagonist. I can see an argument that it would be too expected for Ellery to be the one trapped again, but still...● Overall, it was a solid read but felt a bit standard. I think that's best illustrated in the bit about the interrogation room: not that anything here is done badly, but it's been done before. Scarred heroine who was a killer's only survivor; corrupt police chief; that lack of two-way mirrors; etc.