Book Review: THE SECRETS OF GOOD PEOPLE

Title: The Secrets of Good People

Author: Boo Walker with Peggy Shainberg

Publisher: Lake Union Publishing

Pages: 380

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

 

Catherine Thomas, a medical illustrator, is swept into an unexpected, if slightly tepid, romance with Dr Frank Overbrook, who is 20 years older. An orphan and friendless, she is overjoyed when he proposes. They move to a quiet Florida village where Frank will take over the small practice of his old college classmate, retiring doctor Dr Sandy Westerling, while using the downtime to write a medical textbook.

The couple are welcomed by their new friends in the village. But on the morning after the celebratory party held in their honour, Frank is found dead. Which of their new friends would have wanted him dead?

Was it Miriam Arnett or her husband, the wheelchair-bound David, or the blind sculptor, Sylvie Nye? Or was it Dr Sandy or his nurse Glenna Greely? Or the heavily pregnant Amber and her husband, Levi, who seem to be hiding out here? Or worse, could the killer be Catherine herself? Detective Quentin Jones has his hands full solving this crime.

 

The book is written in the 3^rd person omniscient point of view.

 

Jones wasn’t impressive in the least. The book is set in February 1970, so much of the investigation is understandably dependent on repeated questioning. But I never got the sense that he owned the interrogation. The manner in which he asks for permission to record conversations could have been handled better.

Also, some of the dialogues were cringe-inducing, causing Jones to come off as a prig. I don’t think that was the intended effect. The entire island showed that they didn’t care two hoots about his authority. He kept making promises to return.

The narrative voice, and even Jones’ boss, make it a point to din it into our heads that Jones is very good at his job because he thinks like a criminal, and that he has an impressive track record of solving cases. But I couldn’t find any evidence of his talents in this case. Thankfully his character improved as the book progressed, and he became slightly less insufferable. Only slightly.

The only two characters I thought were well drawn were Catherine and Miriam. The others were all flat and uninteresting. The characters I liked the least were Sylvie and Quentin. Their interactions took away from the intensity of the book.  

The book started off really well, and the murder happened early on, and I found myself settling down for a gripping read. But then the pace slowed down, thanks to the long backstories that were provided for every character, and precious little happened in the present, until more than half the book was done. The story didn’t advance in any way.

Detective Jones himself was introduced to us by way of a long scene at a bar, and an introduction to three old cops and a woman that Jones used to date. This entire scene could have been eliminated. Neither the woman nor the three cops show up again, but the book included their backstories too.

There was a twist at the end, but one that I’d seen coming. So the conclusion wasn’t as satisfying as I’d hoped it would be.

There were a lot of proofing errors in the Kindle edition. At one point, the author says of a newborn baby: “The baby had a churlish smile.” Babies don’t smile until they are some months of age. Besides the factual inaccuracy, the idea of describing a baby’s smile as churlish makes no sense.

 

I found this line quite interesting:

Every little animal, when set loose for the first time, dashes wildly to be sure it is really free.

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)