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SHADOWS
by Edna Buchanan
Simon and Schuster, June 2005
272 pages
$24.00
ISBN: 0743250559


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

How much urgency can there be to solving a murder that is more than 40 years old? In the case of Pierce Nolan, who was murdered at his home in Miami in 1961, quite a lot. That home, Shadows, is in a prime development area and is about to be bulldozed to make way for condominiums and homes for the la-di-dah crowd. And Kiki Courtelis, local preservationist, is convinced that there is evidence in that home that will solve the Nolan murder, evidence that will be destroyed if the demolition is allowed to take place.

Nolan was a man who on the surface was loved by everyone. He had a promising political future and a storybook family. After his death, his wife and children scattered and became estranged as a result of disagreements over the estate.

Not expecting to find anything of relevance, the Cold Case Squad is stunned to find a box in the cellar containing seven heavily-wrapped dead babies. Obviously, the destruction of the Shadows is put on hold; and the squad follows the clues to reveal the story of the babies and what happened to Nolan all those years ago.

At the same time, one of the squad members, Detective Sam Stone, has a personal case that he has asked the squad to assist with. In 1987, his parents were murdered at their barbecue restaurant. The grandmother who raised him is oddly reluctant to speak of what she knows. At first what seems to have been a robbery is shown to be something else altogether.

Each of the members of the cold case squad is a main character in the book; there's not one that stands out as the protagonist or lead, which makes the book feel very realistic. The lieutenant, KC Riley, has more authority within the group, but each of the members contributes their share in all of the investigations. Many are developed in secondary stories in the book, which adds to their appeal.

I also liked the fact that the two cases covered in the book were completely separate from one another and did not end up interconnecting, something that happens all too often in many of the procedurals that I read.

At one time, Buchanan was a favorite author of mine based on her Britt Montero series which was written in the 1990s. That series began a downhill decline for me after a while, and I stopped reading Buchanan. However, with the Cold Case Squad series, Buchanan has gotten her groove back.

SHADOWS is the second in the series, and a very competent police procedural. The cold case element makes the investigations even more challenging than usual. And there's nobody who writes Miami better than Buchanan.

Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, July 2005

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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