Customer Reviews

Unknown Means

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4 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

The characters first introduced in Elizabeth Becka's Trace Evidence are back to entertain you in the fast-paced book, Unknown Means. The book lures you in from the first page with a descriptive scene of a posed corpse and carries you all the way through to a surprising, if violent finale.

As a divorced working mother with an intense career as a forensic specialist, Evelyn James finds herself involved in a challenging mystery. The Cleveland police detectives are baffled as the clues and the victims are piling up with no apparent connection, but Evelyn goes beyond her duties with the Medical Examiner's office to make some sense of the scant evidence found at the crime scenes. The plot heats up when the crimes turn personal and a friend from work is nearly killed. Now Evelyn must battle her fears as she fights to keep her demanding career, faces down her claustrophobia in another seemingly unrelated investigation, struggles with a stormy relationship, and faces the possibility that a killer may now have targeted her own teenaged daughter!

A forensic specialist in real life, Elizabeth Becka pulls you into a mystery that shows her expert knowledge and ability to create personable and believable characters that are easy to relate to. The way in which she shows a woman's personal turmoil while piecing together the puzzles makes for enjoyable reading. Mystery fans will appreciate the twists and turns that make this locked-room mystery a treat.

by Rhonda Esakov
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

Unknown Means by Elizabeth Becka is this author's second novel, and unlike so many second novels, this one holds up, and in fact, could quite well be an improvement over the first. This is a good sign of things to come!

The plot is has been pretty well described with some other wonderful review here, so I will not dwell on that aspect all that much. The author has skillfully blended suspense (I classify this one as a thriller, but it is so much more), personal life and challenges, relationships and a strongly written work addressing police procedures into a very readable work. The author takes us into the personal life of a medical examiner, in this case Evelyn James, and goes from an apparent random homicide, into the personal. I like this sort of plot as it gives us a chance to not only read a good story, but we get to seemingly know the characters on a personal basis. The author is skillful enough to actually cause you to feel for the heroine and her various experiences both on the job and relating to her personal life.

I found this one to be fast moving and it did not bog down as so many in this particular genre tend to do from time to time. I liked the way Ms Becka has been able to not only to give us plenty of scientific forensic (without treating us like a pack of idiots) and yet making it clear that police work is a very grueling profession.

This author is obviously a good story teller. I was captivated from page one. For a good to get lost in read, it would be difficult to find a better way to spend a rainy weekend.

Highly recommend this one.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

Elizabeth Becka knows Cleveland, and intimately so. Though she has left that city's Coroner's Office for the more hospitable climes of Cape Coral, Florida, to work as a police forensic specialist, there is little, if anything, about her former home that has escaped her memory.

Becka's debut novel, 2007's TRACE EVIDENCE, garnered popular and critical acclaim on multiple levels, from its dead-on portrayal of the widely diverse neighborhoods of Cleveland to Evelyn James, the tough and tender heroine who balances her professional life as a forensic specialist in the city's Medical Examiner's Office with her personal life as a single mother of a teenaged daughter. Becka, James and the City of Cleveland return in UNKNOWN MEANS, wherein Becka combines classic mystery elements with contemporary thriller themes to provide her growing number of readers with another winner.

Grace Markham, one of the wealthy ladies who lunch, is found dead in the penthouse suite that she shares with her husband. The suite is located in a high-end, high-security building, the door wasn't forced open and the building's surveillance system shows absolutely nothing untoward. The number one suspect in Markham's murder, her husband, has an airtight alibi as well, even though he has a strong motive for wanting her life to end. When another woman is found dead across town in Lakewood, an old-money neighborhood, and a close friend of James is also attacked, it becomes clear that what had appeared to be an extremely unfortunate but nonetheless random series of events isn't necessarily random at all.

Cleveland homicide detective David Milaski is assigned to investigate the murders, which, given James's personal and tumultuous involvement with him, causes professional and emotional complications for both of them, not the least of which concern James's daughter, who is caught between feeling neglected and seeking adolescent independence. Dogged police work and some interesting forensic studies bring James and Milaski closer to the killer, resulting in an exciting and claustrophobic conclusion that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.

Becka apparently departed Cleveland with a suitcase full of notes regarding the minutiae of the city, both political and personal, as she never seems to miss a beat when intertwining the cultural background of one of America's most quietly intriguing metropolises with a first-rate mystery puzzle. And that forensic element in the book? You'll never go into a high-rise office building without thinking, at least twice, about UNKNOWN MEANS. I can't wait for the third installment.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

SUMMARY: The second in Becka's series featuring forensic scientist Evelyn James of the Cleveland OCME deals with the serial murders of wealthy women of various ages and backgrounds. The evidence is slight and the motives murky, but what is most puzzling is how the perpetrator attains access to the victims.

WHAT YOU'LL LIKE: Becka is a trained forensic scientist and her descriptions of procedures and politics involved in the collection of evidence is straightforward and authentic. She doesn't dumb down the complexities of the science nor does she overwhelm the reader with information and jargon which isn't germane to the plot. Evelyn is an engaging protagonist, the prose is snappy, and the pacing is excellent.

WHAT YOU WON'T: As this novel is part of a series, it presupposes the first entrant has been read. If you haven't, it might be somewhat disarming to be introduced to characters and relationships for which not too much background is provided. The characterization is good enough that it shouldn't hinder enjoyment of the story, though one might well come out of it finding they didn't well enough understand the motives and feelings of the primary characters.

BOTTOM LINE: Well-written and intelligent, this book is a welcome addition to the genre. For fans of the 'female sleuth scientist' protagonist, Evelyn James is reminiscent of Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta, minus the superiority complex and the alienation of the audience.

Evelyn James is not an unusual woman. Yeah, she's a forensic specialist in the Medical Examiner`s office, which means she makes more money than a lot of women. But she's still a single mom trying to keep tabs on a teenage daughter, working long hours with not enough help, and trying to juggle both those things and a man who wants more from her than she's ready to give right now. To complicate that situation, she works with the guy. He's not her partner, which is probably a very good thing. So most readers will be able to identify with her in one area or another.

Right now, she's got a locked room mystery. A rich single woman is killed inside her penthouse in a very high-security building. No forced entry, nobody unusual on the cameras, no way in except through the front door. In the middle of her investigation, she's called to an explosion in the salt mines underneath Cleveland. She's claustrophobic, so this isn't easy for her. Then one of her friends is attacked and almost killed (twice) by whoever it is that killed the RSW in the penthouse. And the daughter's boyfriend brings her home drunk. The fun just never ends.

UNKNOWN MEANS is a well-written novel of suspense with a few minor flaws. The major fact on which the plot depends is good, although I would be surprised if it took a real police department that long to figure it out. The scenes between Evelyn and her daughter are believable, but the amount of time Evelyn leaves her daughter unsupervised is not. Fans of early Cornwell and Kathy Reichs will not be disappointed; Becka knows her forensics and can tell a good story.

I like the over all story, but it's so hard for me to get past the fact that the ME is doing all the police work in this book. She is investigating, following up and seems to be the only person that knows what is going on in regards to the case. The police look clueless. The boyfriend also came across in the beginning as a pain in the butt bugging our protag to move in together to the point I wanted to scream at him to leave her alone. The ending wrapped up everything pretty quickly, in fact I was surprised at how fast it ended and how, of course it wants us wanting to read the next book just to see what happens. Ok book, but lets get our ME back to her job and put in some more CSI into the books, less police work on her part.

This is the second book from this writer and I have added her to my list of favorites which includes JD Robb and Catherine Coulter (FBI series. If you enjoy good mystery please try this one and her previous one. I eagerly await her next bok.

Cleveland Medical Examiner Evelyn James knows her life is full between work and her personal relationships. A single mom Evelyn struggles not to murder her glowering teenage daughter Angel and tries to separate her romance with homicide detective David Milaski from their work together.

The current case involves the murder of twenty-eight years old affluent Grace Markham in her locked apartment inside a secure building. Not too long after the homicide, Metro General Hospital ER Doctor Bailey calls her at two in the morning because someone assaulted her friend Marissa Gonzalez, who lives in the same building as Grace did. Another similar homicide occurs. Evelyn, David and his partner, Bruce Riley investigate trying to find the link between the victims at a time the case load starting with the Lake Erie underwater explosion affirms to Evelyn that twenty-four hours is not enough time in a day.

The anti Kay Scarpetta (personality that is), Evelyn holds this strong police procedural together. The story line is fast-paced from the onset as Evelyn and the police team look for clues at the Markham crime scene and never slows down even when she investigate the Lake Erie explosion while almost crapping in her underwear out of fear. Readers will like this forensic police tale and seek Evelyn's previous appearance (see TRACE EVIDENCE).

Harriet Klausner

You have a M.E. acting like a detective, and the real detectives don't mind. I don't think so.