Death Train To Boston (Audio Cassette)

There was no mystery to this mystery; it was simply a chronicle of Fremont and Michael trying to get back together after a horrific train accident. There was certainly no mystery where the religious fanatic was concerned. I rather hoped he would involved in the sabotage of the S&P that Fremont and Michael were investigating or attached to some other nefarious scheme but I was disappointed. There was no investigation of the sabotage whatsoever, just some half-baked thoughts Michael offered the readers. While finding the woman he loves was very important, if he thought there was some sort of connection shouldn't he have been doing some snooping to confirm or deny that connection rather than hand wringing and grumphing? Please do not get me started on throwing in the bad guy in the last 30 pages with no support as to WHY he was sabotaging the S&P since it was made clear to the reader J&K were called in secretly. Harrumph!

Ms. Day fell into a very nasty habit of repeating herself when it came to emphasizing a character's feelings or thoughts; sometimes four or five paragraph's worth of repetition. The action, such as it was, neither moved the plot along nor provided closure to any portion of that very thin plot. The plot thrashed about with internal discussions and chit chat. Mysteries are action based not character based, Elizabeth George aside, and Ms. Day seems to have forgotten that very important point - she had a good handle on it in her previous books.

There were so many chances to introduce any number of subplots; i.e. Meiling Li's transformation beyond what we were told rather than shown, the S&P sabotage plot, a possible romantic flirtation between Meiling and Michael (I can hear fans muttering angrily already), a chance for a San Francisco case Wish was handling to be tied to all this, the possibility of Melancthon Pratt being far more treachorous and cunning than a mediocre stock heavy, the heavy-handed introduction of Hilliard Ramsey could have signalled so many future possibilities for stories.... do I need to go on?

We are served up something that reads more like poorly edited journal entries than a story. Editors are getting lazier and lazier when they allow this sort of drivel to be published when even a casual reader of Ms. Day's work can see that she has written stories with far more craft and style than this book.

Very, very disappointed in this entry in the series.