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DEVIL SENT THE RAIN begins with the murder of Caroline Lee, a young and hard-charging lawyer at her family's Memphis law firm, one of the most prestigious in the South as she is shot point blank in the face. The Lee family is the epitome of "old money" and "old South", and a family that Detective Billy Able has quite the history with and knows can exert tremendous political pressure on the city's political forces.
The initial investigation reveals several key facts that reveal how delicate the case will be for Billy and his partner, Frankie. Caroline was murdered in her car while wearing a wedding dress, even though close friends and family have no clue to whom she could be marrying. Caroline had broken off her engagement with the successful, but tempestuous neurosurgeon Dr. Raj Sharma recently, and was in the midst of pondering filing a restraining order against him. When the medical examiner finds that Caroline was in the early stages of pregnancy, it further casts a dark cloud over Dr. Sharma, who quickly lawyers up. Caroline's powerful family, led by family matriarch Rosalyn and Caroline's slimy brother, Martin, are clearly more concerned with collateral damage to the law firm than with finding out what happened to their murdered daughter and sister. Billy is struggling to detach his feelings about Caroline from the case he's leading, as the two shared a failed relationship in their youth from which he has not quite moved on.
Southern mysteries often feature dark family secrets, and the desire to keep them concealed, and this is no different. The Lee family is haunted, and perhaps a little embarrassed, by the disappearance of Caroline's cousin Finn a few years before; and with the help of a family cousin, that case comes back up in the course of the investigation. While mysteries with southern gothic elements are far from new, it's a relief to see them uprooted from New Orleans and Savannah and replanted in the unfamiliar landscape of Memphis. The locale gives flavor to, but never overwhelms, the narrative and the portrayal of this powerful family of the Old South is certainly juicy.
This is certainly a compulsive read and a quite entertaining work, but perhaps as a result of the richly-drawn family at the center of the mystery, Billy and Frankie never quite seem like fully-fleshed out characters. They often seem like stock characters invented as a vehicle for readers to see this story unfold. The mystery at the center of the plot hooks the reader early on, but admittedly features a couple too many red herrings and loose ends.
While the third in this series, this can certainly work well as a standalone work, and fans of mysteries that edge towards hard-boiled territory and well-wrought suspense tales will not be disappointed. There is still opportunity for growth in the series, but also much promise. DEVIL SENT THE RAIN is a fast-paced read that most readers won't regret spending time with.
§ Ben Neal is a librarian who likes to fancy himself an amateur writer, humorist, detective, and coffee connoisseur in his spare time. He can be reached at beneneal@indiana.edu.
Reviewed by Ben Neal, October 2016
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