The Vanishing Season, The Current

 Hi all,

I think I am back. Not sure if anything is more settled but the Covid Stage here is back down to three, from five all winter, masks requirements are coming down, it is warmer with a couple of cold fronts coming through again but with less frigid cold, thankfully. After a false start to March, as of today our Mystery Book Club can meet in the library again.

I thought I would start off with the books we read for February (our meeting had to be cancelled) and March (which should have been last week but will be this coming week.)

The Vanishing Season by Joanna Schaffhausen (Ellery Hathaway #1)

About: "Ellery Hathaway knows a thing or two about serial killers, but not through her police training. She's an officer in sleepy Woodbury, MA, where a bicycle theft still makes the newspapers. No one there knows she was once victim number seventeen in the grisly story of serial killer Francis Michael Coben. The only one who lived. When three people disappear from her town in three years―all around her birthday―Ellery fears someone knows her secret. Someone very dangerous. Her superiors dismiss her concerns, but Ellery knows the vanishing season is coming and anyone could be next. She contacts the one man she knows will believe her: the FBI agent who saved her from a killer all those years ago. Agent Reed Markham made his name and fame on the back of the Coben case, but his fortunes have since turned. His marriage is in shambles, his bosses think he's washed up, and worst of all, he blew a major investigation. When Ellery calls him, he can’t help but wonder: sure, he rescued her, but was she ever truly saved? His greatest triumph is Ellery’s waking nightmare, and now both of them are about to be sucked into the past, back to the case that made them...with a killer who can't let go."

I really liked this book. It was very suspenseful, creepy in parts and was definelty a page turner. The author was really good at redirecting your focus to potential suspects. I was sure the culprit were two different people and then they weren't.. Although there were clues, totally caught off guard with who the killer was. Loved Bump (the dog) and got worried. I liked  Ellery and Reed and glad to see he the Ellery is in the next book. 

There are five books in the series. https://www.joannaschaffhausen.com/

The Current by Tim Johnston

About: "Tim Johnston, whose 2015 national bestseller Descent was called “astonishing” by the Washington Post and “unforgettable” by the Miami Herald, returns with another tour de force about the indelible impact of a crime on the lives of innocent people.

When two young women leave their college campus in the dead of winter for a 700-mile drive north to Minnesota, they suddenly find themselves fighting for their lives in the icy waters of the Black Root River, just miles from home. One girl’s survival, and the other’s death—murder, actually—stun the citizens of a small Minnesota town, thawing memories of another young woman who lost her life in the same river ten years earlier, and whose killer may yet live among them. One father is forced to relive his agony while another’s greatest desire—to bring a killer to justice—is revitalized . . . and the girl who survived the icy plunge cannot escape the sense that she is connected to that earlier unsolved case by more than a river. Soon enough she’s caught up in an investigation of her own that will unearth long-hidden secrets, and stoke the violence that has long simmered just below the surface of the town. Souls frozen in time, ghosts and demons, the accused and the guilty, all stir to life in this cold northern place where memories, like treachery, run just beneath the ice, and where a young woman can come home but still not be safe "

I received this book as one of The Strand Book Hook Up books. I thought it was pretty good, very suspenseful, a good thriller. Lots of secrets being kept by the characters. I did have a little trouble getting into rhythm of the writing. I was a little confused at first because the story does flash back 10 years on and off. I can usually follow that ok, but maybe after reading some cozies, I had to get into a different mode. It is a stand alone. 

http://www.timjohnston.net/

The April Mystery Book Club selection is Brad Thor month - reader's choice. 

I will post some the ARC's and audio books I have read/listened too in the past few months, soon.