Dancing with the Virgins: A Crime Novel [Hardcover]

The resolution is slow coming but very satisfactory. The on-again-off-again relationship between Ben and Diane appears to be warming up but both have depths and secretes not yet available to the other.

Reminds me somewhat of the early books by Peter Robinson. rating 4.5/5

This book is packed with red herrings, but in superior story like this, you can't just call the red herrings red herrings. They are full fledged, highly involving subplots. What I mean is, the police connect victim Jenny Weston to a whole lot of strange people, with odd secrets. There's the nasty farmer, with the quiet, scared little boys, whose wife found Maggie Crews after she'd been slashed, and who is up to something sinister in his barn. There is Mark Roper, area Ranger, who may be dangerously manic about the rules, and who seems to know a secret about his lonely boss, Owen, who doesn't always answer his radio when he should. There's another missing woman, Ros Daniels, who may have visited Jenny Weston in her home, but if so, were they friends or enemies?

The two main detectives--with some support from an extended cast of law enforcers, each with well-drawn personalities--bicker, and criticize each other (Fry gets especially incensed by Cooper's investigations beyond the obvious scope of the case; but then Ben Cooper is the one more likely to follow up a vague hunch that turns over the wrong rocks), but they do follow all the various trails left by all the colourful suspects, and naturally it can't all relate to the main chain of violence that cultivated in murder.

In the end,I think some of the clues could be classified as a bit transparent by the adept mystery reader (though the large quantity of red herrings and smokescreening in the form of bona fide interesting subplots may help to counter this if, like me, you read too fast to do any really diligent sifting). I maintain that any stalwart ready to pounce on every apparent clue may pick out the real clues, especially the ones near the end of the book that do some last-minute "pointing" at the true culprit. Plus, I recall a few chapters--short ones in the first half or third of the book--that probably could have been cut. One short chapter basically focuses on Sgt. Fry driving somewhere after an intense interview with scarred and bitter Maggie Crew, and Fry's ruminations and reflections don't really add to the plot. I recall another chapter of a similar nature; mood and character are slightly attended to in ways that merely buttress what is already clear in other chapters, but overall a few chapters that could possibly have been eliminated, or just boiled down to a nub and summarized in a longer chapter. See if you spot this in two instances.

But only two. Mostly, this crime novel is engaging from the get-go, with lots of details, and a powerful mood brought on by a simmering rural pot of explosive ingredients, where not just a murderer has something to hide.

I know that I enjoyed the book at the time-- it was a quick read and kept me well occupied in a week where I was sick, but the plot felt a bit overdone. And now that I sit (one week later) to write a review, I found it really difficult to remember who had done what to whom and why.

A woman's body is found in a ring of standing stones which legend has it are the remains of Virgins caught dancing on a Sunday and turned to stone. Bound up in the mystery are a woman with a disfigured face found wandering in the same location, a very angry farmer on the brink of ruin, and a missing girl with dreadlocks who nobody seems to be able to identify. Even while still being at odds, Ben Cooper and Diane Fry need to work together to solve the mystery.