Review: Idyll Hands by Stephanie Gayle

Idyll Hands

by Stephanie Gayle

Publisher: Seventh Street Books

Pages: 303

Format: book

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  Charleston, Massachusetts, 1972: Rookie cop Michael Finnegan gets a call from his mother. His youngest sister, Susan, has disappeared, the same sister who ran away two years earlier. Anxious not to waste police resources, Finnegan advises his family to wait and search on their own. But a week turns into two decades, and Susan is never found.

Idyll, Connecticut, 1999: In the woods outside of town, a young woman's corpse is discovered, and Detective Finnegan seems unusually disturbed by the case. When Police Chief Thomas Lynch learns about Finnegan's past, he makes a bargain with his officer: He will allow Finnegan to investigate the body found in the woods--if Finnegan lets the bored Lynch secretly look into the disappearance of his sister.

Both cases reveal old secrets--about the murder, and about the men inside the Idyll Police Station and what they've been hiding from each other their whole careers.

Kritters Thoughts:  The third in the series and as I said yesterday, I believe its best to start at the beginning of this series even though the mysteries are all self contained there are so many characters with true arcs throughout the series that you won't want to miss out on what starts from the beginning.  

In this book there is more than one narrator, one of the detectives, Michael Finnegan helps narrate a few chapters as one of the mysteries is from his past and his family.  His sister went missing 27 years ago and Detective Finnegan has always felt guilty for not be able to help her and his Chief decides to step in and help look for new clues.

This is brought to light as they found a body in their small town that looks like it has been there a long time and they are start trying to figure out what happened to this girl.  

With two missing girl cases in one book, it got confusing as to which missing girl case we were reading about.  I had to take notes with this one.  I didn't love that the cases were so so similar that it was so easy to get them mixed up.  I wish they had just a few unique things with each of them so it was easier to know which was which.  

I liked having a new point of view in this story and getting to know one of the detectives more closely, but it read a little slower for me than the previous two.  


Rating: definitely a good read, but can't read two in a row

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from Promethus Books.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.