writing

This is not the very best mystery I have ever read of Nancy Pickard's writing. The story is good enough to stick with though.

It begins with Marie Lightfoot, true crime writer, receiving a scary e-mail. This killer wants Marie to collaborte with him by becoming his next victim-and writing a book about her own murder. But for Marie, it may be the key to solving her most personal mystery and at last uncover the truth about about the disappearance of her parents. They were underground Civil Rights activists who vanished during the explosive summer of 1963. Now Marie must follow the instructions of her "co-author' to find the answers she seeks in a small Alabama town-while racing to outwit her would-be killer before she is forced to write her own final page.

this book started off great with a personable character and premise. however it began to get formulaic and with the civil rights story attached to it too messy. it also seemed to me as i was reading that the author was writing it as though she hoped it would be made into a movie. i skipped to the end around chapter 18. she had me until then. three old men as the villains didn't do it for me. it would have been more interesting to treat each story in a separate book: one for the mysterious disappearance and death of her parents and the second for the stalker fan.

She has interviewed and written about killers, psychopaths and spree killers but all her researching skills never enabled her to close in on the truth about what happened to her parents when they seemingly vanished into thin air. True crime writer Marie Lightfoot has given up hope of proving that her parents weren't traitors to the civil rights movement.

One day while shopping at the local supermarket, she picks up a paper and reads about her parents who betrayed a civil rights group called the Hostel in their hometown of Sebastion, Alabama. She is later contacted by email by a man claiming to know the whole story of her parents' death and wants to collaborate with Marie about writing a true crime book where she is the victim. Marie's search for answers takes her back to the town of her birth and a deadly conspiracy that is almost four decades old.

Nancy Pickard has written another exciting installment in her delightful "Marie Lightfoot" crime thriller series. This time the protagonist is portrayed as the victim and through the first person narrative, the audience sees how she suffers. The confrontation with the killers of Marie's parents is so astonishing that readers will never be able to get the scene out of their heads.

Harriet Klausner