A Killing In Vail

A Killing in Vail

by D. M. O'Byrne

Reading the newspaper one morning, Ryn learns about the death of a dear friend. The Vail police are calling it an unfortunate accident, but Ryn is calling their bluff. Determined to figure out what happened to her friend, she begins an investigation of her own against the advice of her boyfriend, the Trout Fork police captain. But, when her life is put in danger, she must examine not only her suspects, but also the importance of her relationship.

I must admit, I had a rough start reading this mystery. There is a lot of front matter that I had to scroll past before I could get to the actual story. Then, I got to the first chapter.

The story begins with an info dump in the form of an epistolary and, I gotta say, I think it works. In a few short pages, we learn the main character's name, her boyfriend's name, and their hometown, as well as the name of her friend and a little background information. It was just enough information to get to know the players, maybe even get the reader interested in the story and clue the reader in to some information from the previous books, since this is #3 in a series. However, it was not enough to be overwhelming or confusing.

Unfortunately, the following scenes are full of narrations with ideas that bounce around. Much of it is expanding on topics that were mentioned in the opening emails and overall, I found the first chapter very confusing. I felt a lot of the back story that is given in the first chapter could have been shown in dialogue with the main character interacting with party guests in a wedding instead of just narration.

Within the first chapter, two weeks pass by without anything happening. It made me wonder why the wedding scene was even included. While I am not trying to rewrite the book, in my opinion, the story would have been stronger if the wedding was shown as a prologue or if more details were given to explain the main character's relationship with the deceased a little better. Then, the next chapter could start the two weeks later when Ryn reads the story of the dead body.

However, once I got through the first chapter, I found I did not want to put the book down. Although there was a lot of repetition in this book, and a little too much exposition, I really enjoyed the story and found myself invested in both the investigation and the relationship. Although this book is a mystery, I found myself more engrossed in the relationship between Ryn and Garrett than the investigation. I was pleased to learn that I figured out the whodunnit long before Ryn, though I did like the twist at the end when describing the how.

At the end of the story, I walked away from the book feeling like I needed just a little more. A little more description. A little more action. A little more dialogue. A little more romance.

That said, I really enjoyed the romance element of this book and will be reading more in this series to learn how Ryn and Garrett met and what happens to them after this.



Overall, I would rate this story four quills and place it on my middle shelf.