Customer Reviews

Shadows Fall

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

From the moment, I read the first two paragraphs of Shadows Fall I was hooked. What I had anticipated from a genre of a romantic mystery was a gentle heroine who discovered the object of her affection had a mysterious background. To find Beth Gray, the heroine, standing over a dead body with a loaded gun in her hand was shocking.

Fifteen years later Beth and her own daughter Abby are back. The thriller begins after Beth, who was convicted for murder and then released early, returns to her family estate "The Wilder Mountain Lodge" which is located on the west slope of Shadow Lake in California. The property value could be a clue to the identity of the real murderer.

Fourteen-year-old Ollie was involved with Beth's sister Vicky. At thirteen Vicky was enchanted by the handsome boy, and refused to forgive her sister. Her brother Matt, though he loved Beth dearly, testified against his sister at the trial. The traumatic events created an emotional dilemma for the young man.

Her romantic interest is introduced so casually in Chapter One that readers may not notice the connection between the two. It is ethereal, but perfect because we have all experienced that "there is something about her/him that I can't explain" feeling.

I will not provide a list of suspects and motives. Rest assured that there are a plethora of clues (and some red herrings) that will keep you turning pages. In many ways, this book reminded me of Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians." There are only a limited number of people who could have killed Ollie. In self-protection, the killer will strike again. Beth, Abby, and everyone she knows is in danger or dangerous.

Although there are a few cliché descriptions in Shadows Fall they do not detract from the plot, characters, surprises, and puzzle. This is a crime solver's delight; a romance that touches our hearts. This, most likely, will become a movie in which Winona Rider would be the perfect Beth.

If you start reading at dawn, suddenly it will be time to turn on some lights. The excuse will be that it is getting too dark to read. Too dark to be in the house with a killer -- the characters are so real that you know they are there with you.

Do not just wait for the movie -- let your heart race with this 5 star book that should become a New York Times Best Seller.

Victoria Tarrani

As the wife of a mystery author I get to read a lot of "his" books. This one, however, is my kind of mystery. The characters are painted in exacting detail, the scenery is grand, and the story is as complex as it is satisfying. Since I am a California girl, the only thing this author could have added is a map to Wilder Mountain Lodge. Halfway through the first chapter I wanted to go there... still do.

SHADOWS FALL is a wonderful book! Normally I don't read a book this long but this one held my interest all the way through.

Memories overwhelmed Beth Gray when she returned home to the old lodge in her big white Mercedes. To look at her, no one would ever dream she was a murderer returning to the scene of a fifteen-year-old crime. Coming home to visit her mother and to introduce her daughter, Abby, to her grandmother, hid the real reason for the visit, to chase ghosts. Only her mother wanted her here. Most of her brothers and sisters looked at her with hate.

At the age of seventeen, she was found holding a gun over the bloody body of Ollie Stevens. Everyone believed she killed him. Beth claimed to have picked up the gun when she found him dead. No one listened. She spent six years in prison and three years on parole. One condition of her parole had been to stay out of Wilder, California. After prison, she married, divorced, and lived under an alias, as a famous designer, in San Diego. Now she was free to set things right by returning to silence the nightmares that awoke her almost nightly.

"The past has driven me backhere, it won't let go. It keeps hammering at my mind..."

While in prison, she had saved a nurse from another prisoner's wrath and was shot in the knee for her deed. In the process, she had met Dr. Peter Lloyd, a caring man who became drawn to her. He operated on her smashed knee and befriended her, while she tried not to open to him. After his wife died, he never forgot Beth's stories of fishing and her mother's lodge.

When Beth glimpsed Peter at the lodge, he pretended not to know her. Their attraction was stronger than ever. The understanding Peter offered, softened the animosity of her family. Soon Peter, Beth and Abby became a threesome, and scouted trails in the countryside. Warm feelings also bubbled up in Beth for her high school fiancé, Gabriel?

Beth thought of staying and running the lodge, but couldn't change the past. No one wanted to forgive or forget. Beth's claustrophobia flourished, as mysterious happenings occurred, doors closed and locked her in, and someone tore up her drawings. Then someone shot at her. Were they trying to kill her or scare her away? She couldn't give her heart to Peter or Gabriel until she felt free from the shadows that hung in her mind, free from being wrongfully accused, if ever.

Barbara Klaser has crafted a mystery of terror and romance with all the clues in place, but the reader won't find an answer until the end of Beth's twisting and turning nightmare. Those with heart problems, asthma, or ulcers should contact their doctors' or pre-medicate themselves before reading this story, and if shortness of breath or chest pain develops, call 911.

Nancy B. Leake, Reviewer