Kristen Lepionka - The Last Place You Look

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Well written and exciting

I enjoyed The Last Place You Look very much.  It's a well-written and exciting crime story with an engaging protagonist.

The story is narrated by Ohio private investigator Roxane Weary, and sounds rather well-worn.  A man's date of execution is finally fixed for two months hence, but his sister believes that she has just seen his alleged victim whose body was never found and she seeks Roxane's help in proving him innocent.  Roxane meets suspiciously strong hostility from the local police as her investigation leads her into unexpected and dark territory.

So far, so familiar, but it's very well done so the whole thing felt pretty fresh to me.  Roxanne is a fine creation: tough and determined but flawed, she seemed very real to me, as did the other characters.  The plot development was well handled and the final stages are genuinely exciting.  Kristen Lepionka writes very well; I know it's usually just lazy cliché to trot out the name of Raymond Chandler when talking about a PI novel, but there did seem to me to be some Chandleresque features here.  There's the odd striking simile like "My stomach felt like I'd swallowed a bottle opener," for example, and the smug, hostile small-town police department felt rather like Bay City Police in Farewell, My Lovely.  Nonetheless, Lepionka has her own style, and I like it.

This isn't an instant classic, but it's an enjoyable, well executed thriller and a very promising start to a series.  I'll be looking out for the next Roxane Weary book and I can recommend this one warmly.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)