Retro Reading: False Impressions by Terri Thayer
Annual Ice Festival brings not only snow, but Murder
It's pretty clear that I hated the first installment in The Stamping Sisters mystery series, but now with the third installment False Impressions author Terri Thayer is becoming quite the mystery writer.
In Aldenville, PA residents are getting ready for the annual Ice Festival and while working at her friend Deana's funeral home, April Buchert comes across the unclaimed ashes of friend Mary Lou's brother, J.B.
April can't figure out why the cremains are still at the home since Mary Lou could easily afford to pay for them. She's told that Mary Lou's brother had been killed a year before in an explosion at a meth lab and that he was the "black sheep" of Mary Lou's family.
While her friend won't return her calls she gets a phone call from Mary Lou's daughter, Kit and invites her over to her new home- way out into the country.
Kit is extremely anxious since she's preparing for J. B.'s "homecoming" startling April. She thinks Kit is in some type of world of her own but J. B. returns and later that night on her way home while trying to navigate the icy roads (something April's forgotten to do since returning home to PA after living in San Francisco for the last few years) she stumbles upon an accident involving J.B. But was this really an accident?
Earlier J.B. says that coming back to Aldenville could get him killed.
Now with a murder at hand, April sets about trying to figure out what happened and how she's become the center of attention in yet another investigation.
At the start of False Impressions Thayer is still a little shaky with grabbing a hold of the readers attention but after a slow start and the introduction of a few new minor characters, Thayer hooks you.
With each new installment Thayer has become a better storyteller and she's finally getting a voice in which her characters are becoming familiar. Even those which are briefly introduced in this installment are interesting and kudos should also be given to her since I think this is the first book I've read in which one of the characters had a meth addiction problem and the toll which it takes on a family.
I do, however, think that this should be the last book in the series because at the end of this installment Thayer wraps everything up nice and tidy-just like the mysterious box she comes across with in the beginning.