This was a slow one. I'd have to characterize it more as a character piece for Perez and some of his healing process post-Fran. Usually her books have the first death around a quarter of the way in and another at about 40%, but don't really get moving until about 60% of the way in.

This one didn't get going until the final chapters and then came pouring out in one fell swoop in the closing chapters. The build up could have been better structured here; I almost felt like Cleeves phoned it in here. This one has been the least interesting of the series so far, but had some reasonable potential.

Cleeves has also been building up an annoying structural habit of describing everything to the n-th degree throughout a book, but then at the end purposely leaving out one or two specific parts of scenes to drag out the mystery a bit longer. She really doesn't need these final cliffhangers at the end, particularly when a character (usually Perez) has a strong idea of the potential answers. Go ahead and let the reader in on the character's thinking and continue leading us. Specifically in this book Perez sends Sandy off to interview someone with three specific questions and Cleeves makes a big deal about Sandy memorizing them. Then we see the scene where he's asking them, but she purposely and annoyingly leaves out his asking the last question and jumps to a different scene. Why bother?

A good mystery should give the reader as many facts displayed throughout the story to allow them to guess the ending and then let the end unravel itself. Cleeves definitely doesn't do this here.

In the end, I'd say about 2.5 out of 5. Entertaining, not her best, I wouldn't read it again.