I am definitely in the midst of a full-on reading phase at the moment. Five books this month, five books last month... I wonder how long it will last before (what I like to term) 'book fatigue' sets in, lol. Still when it does, I can get on with writing my own. That's the trouble, I like reading so much it leaves little time for getting down to doing some writing of my own... but I guess it can be seen as creative-writing research. I'm getting some good ideas on how to write and the ideas for story lines are being honed... so one day! I realise now how easy it is to sit back and judge someone else's work. How will I feel when/if I am the one being judged? Anyway, I digress....
The plot of The Rosary Girls is as follows: There is a serial killer on the loose who is targeting teenage girls. When they are found they are all posed in a similar manner - kneeled with their hands bolted together as in prayer complete with rosary beads. Their murderer does a good job of taunting the police too. Within the hands of each victim is a clue to where the next will be found... if only Philadelphia detectives rookie Jessica Balzano and veteran Kevin Byrne can figure out the puzzle in time. The killing spree begins the week before Easter Sunday and time is running out. Add to this Byrne's need to prove himself after previously harassing an innocent suspect and pushing him to suicide, and single-mum Balzano's professional need to prove herself among the boys club and you get yourself a pretty good story.
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If you're like me when reading a detective book like this you'll be looking to figure out who the killer is right from page one. I'm not going to give it away though :) Needless to say Monanari is clever in his use of information and details - feeding you the right things at just the right time. The guy I was convinced it was right from the start actually wasn't at all, even though part of me knew it couldn't be that easy. And as it turns out -it's not. I got reeled in good and proper. Montanari does a clever job of feeding you information on each of the characters so, probably no matter which one you suspect you'll be convinced you've got the right one. But trust me... you won't get this one until the last few chapters. And if you do? Well, you're a shrewder reader than I am.
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The Rosary Girls is a great story. It's a who-dunnit, detective, thriller novel and is one of those books I couldn't put down. It occurs to me that many of the books I have read are by women, hardly any by men. This isn't intentional. I don't have a preference either way. But Richard Montanari manages to flirt around the edges of emotions in this book. A difficult thing to do, especially with a story cast full of yank cops. But Montanari does well to try and diminish the stereotype. There are a couple of sub plots within the story though that didn't seem to go anywhere. Most notably when Byrne is set up in an alley-way gang killing. He does his best to hide the evidence and seemingly manages to do so (confirmation comes later in the book). But I wasn't sure where this fitted into the main story or what we as readers were supposed to take from it. Except maybe that he's capable of bending the rules and covering up things he doesn't want known. But even so this doesn't really fit. Montanari plans to write, or has already written, other stories with Balzano and Byrne as the main characters. So maybe this sub plot will come back to haunt Byrne in another book.
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There were also one or two nice surprises - but mostly only if you're British. I've not done any research on Montanari, but I'll go out on a limb and hazard a guess that he's spent some time in England? This is the first story I have ever read by an American writer who mentions the chocolate brand name of Cadbury's within the text. Surely the best chocolate in the world next to Gylian (sorry, but I've tasted Hershey's and it doesn't even come close). There are a couple of other British references too, and one of the support characters also comes from Northumberland which is cool. Nora Roberts also gets a mention too. Life is full of coincidences.
