Tag: #contemporaryfantasy

Book Blurb:

Former star basketball player Clay Edison is busy. He’s solved a decades-old crime and redeemed an innocent man, earning himself a suspension in the process. Things are getting serious with his girlfriend. Plus his brother’s fresh out of prison, bringing with him a whole new set of complications.

Then the phone rings in the dead of night.

A wild party in a gentrifying East Bay neighborhood. A heated argument that spills into the street. Gunshots. Chaos.

For Clay and his fellow coroners, it’s the start of a long night and the first of many to come. The victims keep piling up. What begins as a community tragedy soon becomes lurid fodder for social media.

Then the smoke clears and the real mystery emerges – one victim’s death doesn’t match the others. Brutalized and abandoned, stripped of ID, and left to die: She is Jane Doe, a human question mark. And it falls to Clay to give her a name and a voice.

Haunted by the cruelty of her death, he embarks upon a journey into the bizarre, entering a hidden world where innocence and perversity meet and mingle. There, his relentless pursuit of the truth opens the gateway to a dark and baffling past – and brings him right into the line of fire.

My Review:

The second in the series with protagonist Clay Edison, a former college basketball glory boy, though that is still well ingrained in his psyche. In this installment, his brother shows up, pretty much the opposite of Clay. A feature of this series, matching his personal life to his professional which makes him a real human, flesh and bone being with all the foibles as well as triumphs.

The line blurs often, however, with his professional life as a county coroner. While his duty is to check a body, possibly determine one of the five causes of death, and notify next of kin, he often steps outside those boundaries. It makes for an interesting story while stretching credulity.

It’s character driven plot has Clay out to identify a victim that makes it a bit difficult. There was a party that got out of hand and ended with more than one death. This one, however, was found just outside the main scene and was atypical of the others—strangled—not shot.

In order to notify the next of kin, Clay would first have to sort out who he/she was. The storyline meanders a bit with kicky dialogue between Clay and his sweetie, his co-workers, and his erstwhile brother. I’ve still not warmed up to Amy (his love life), but love Clay’s character. There is a LOT going on, splitting the main plot point, the conclusion drawing most together in explanation.

Interesting, but probably not my favorite of the series and this completes all five. I was just really getting into the series by Book 4, but then the whole scenario changed with Book 5. I last read Half Moon Bay, Book 3, which was good. Crime Scene starts the series, which I also enjoyed and led me to listen to the others.

I like the writing style for the most part. It’s smart, clipped, believable. And, I’m happy to be introduced to the narrator who does an excellent job of making these pages come alive. 

I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.

Rosepoint Publishing: Three point Five Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Police Procedural Mysteries, Crime Thrillers, Contemporary Fantasy
Publisher: Random House Audio
ASIN: B07BB11JLB
Listening Length: 8 hrs 3 mins
Narrator: Dennis Boutsikaris
Publication Date: July 31, 2018
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Link: A Measure of Darkness – Amazon-US
Amazon-UK
Barnes & Noble
Kobo

The Authors:

Jonathan Kellerman

Jonathan Kellerman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than three dozen bestselling crime novels, including the Alex Delaware series, The Butcher’s Theater, Billy Straight, The Conspiracy Club, Twisted, True Detectives, and The Murderer’s Daughter. With his wife, bestselling novelist Faye Kellerman, he co-authored Double Homicide and Capital Crimes. With his son, bestselling novelist Jesse Kellerman, he co-authored The Golem of Hollywood and The Golem of Paris. He is also the author of two children’s books and numerous nonfiction works, including Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children and With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars. He has won the Goldwyn, Edgar, and Anthony awards and has been nominated for a Shamus Award. Jonathan and Faye Kellerman live in California, New Mexico, and New York.

Read more at:
http://www.jonathankellerman.com/

Jesse Kellerman

Jesse Kellerman has written dozens of plays and published seven novels, two of them cowritten with his father, Jonathan Kellerman. He has won numerous awards, including the Princess Grace Award for Playwriting (“Things Beyond Our Control”) and the Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle (“The Genius”/”Les Visages”). His novel “Potboiler” was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. An essay, “Let My People Go to the Buffet,” was included in Penguin’s Best American Spiritual Writing (2011). His next book, Crime Scene, was also cowritten with Jonathan Kellerman and will be published in fall 2017. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and children.

The Narrator: 

Dennis Boutsikaris

Dennis Boutsikaris was born December 21, 1952 in Newark, New Jersey, to a Greek American father and Jewish mother,^[1] and grew up in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey.^[2] He took up acting while a student at Governor Livingston High School, because he felt he was too small to succeed in athletics.^[3] A graduate of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, Boutsikaris toured the country with John Houseman’s The Acting Company doing classical theatre. Boutsikaris was married to actress Deborah Hedwall; they divorced in 2002.

He can be heard in over 160 audiobooks and has received eight Audie Awards and two Best Voices of the Year Awards from AudioFile Magazine.^[14] He was voted Best Narrator of the Year by Amazon for The Gene.

Find him at:
http://www.dennisboutsikaris.com *

*Thanks to Wikipedia for this info.

Graphic courtesy Freepik.com