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I kinda knew what I was getting into when I selected this read but here we go ... beer slugging corn holers in the woods in camo and WalMart weaponry ... a John Deere Duck Dynasty combination of fellows!

However, I know there is so much more than meets the eye. I'm thinking, "what kind of angry military might, full of self righteous retribution, is lurking behind these guys?"

I LOVE PENDERGAST!

I've been reading the Pendergast series from the very beginning, sometimes listening to the stories on our long rides to Bar Harbor, ME.

Constance has made her way back to 1880. Coldmoon is investigating a murder on the Rosebud Reservation . D'Agosta is back at the New York Museum of Natural History investigating another murder bizarre homicide.

All old friends I know and love! It's good :)

Sleepy start but I persist!

Like the two track roads so often described in the Pickett sagas, this book is hurtling down a two track of its own. One track is the mystery around the authentic Nazi photo album that turned up at the Saddlestring Library. The other is the Antifa and BLM connection to Nate's stolen air force. It all feels like a stretch but I'm working with it!

"Izzy has always had ... problems. With sleep" ... as an eight year old, as a twenty-something, as a Mother and now, as a recently separated wife searching for her stolen son.

About half way through this one with so many different directions this could go. The night time scenes in the muddy marsh project a splash of supernatural and creepiness but I don't sense a ghost story here.

Let's see where it takes me!

Sixteen pages in and I sense the direction we are going! Emily is two weeks away from her eighteenth birthday and pregnant. It is unclear if she knows who the father is but the community is fearful of who will be accused. Mom and Dad are pissed. He is a professor. She is a Harvard Law grad, worked for a white shoe law firm, angling for a Fed judgeship. Reputations are at stake! Motives for murder???

Rose speaks through her diary. Fern's voice drives the story. Wally is Wally. Mental illness and emotion trouble is the circuitry of this tale. Factitious disorder could be at play here but ... I am unsure.

Like fuzzy edges are coming into focus, the dots are beginning to align. Not only the home invasion and ransom situation, but the marriage too!

The tide is going out, revealing all the junk hidden underneath!

"I'm a chef with money problems, not a mobster."

After a mid-book slog through some painfully slow sequences in the story, more tidbits of backstory are emerging - Maxim, the pile of debt, the conspiracy.

But what about Jade? When does her dirty linen make an appearance??

"Where is Owen? Why did he need to run? And what did I miss about him that he was too afraid to tell me himself?"

Wonderful story so far, an evolving detective story at the core except that mom and step daughter are the detectives, searching for answers about the disappearance of Owen but also seeking answers about themselves.

The last 50 pages bring it all together, a long slog into a tight finish, the secret sauce that makes the challenging pace of the first ~300 pages more tolerable, acceptable. But still, something unsettles me.

The pace has quickened and the reveals are telling but ... do books have a soul? Are they storehouses of emotions? Or is the emotional engagement to a story framed by the reader's state of mind at the time?

As I close in on the story of Clive and Claire, I'm still searching for the hook, the deep layers of feelings that pull me into the pages.

Still waiting!

The pace is painfully slow. The character development is frustratingly thin despite the efforts that seem to be nibbling at the margins at best. Posh resort. Wealthy white people served by the dark skinned island people. White girl is murdered. The stab at racial inequality feels equally thin and marginal.

Will the reveal at the end be worth my literary endurance? Please say yes!

Phantasmagoric ... she is trying way, way too hard.

Patience ... he is trying very hard to hang in there!

Painfully slow and deliberate thus far. My sense is the author recognizes her talent and is putting it on full display by slowing - it - down - with - way -way --- too --- many --- details ----- of ------ minutia!

I persevere!

My notepad is loaded with guesses about what is happening here and the role of each character - Cat, El, Ross, Vik, Mouse, The Tooth Fairy and Bluebeard.

WRONG. WRONG. WRONG! All my guesses are so WRONG!

The blur of childhood memories, perceptions and assumptions tainted by adult fear, guilt and grief is so well done. Often times I am re-reading paragraphs and pages - is this a memory or is this now???

"I don't even know if the Witch existed ... if that conversation ever happened. It'd getting harder and harder, now that memories are returning - the bad as well as the good - to pry apart what was real and what wasn't."

The blur between past and present, childhood and adulthood, where the edges of both ebb and flow in time and space, is so well done that at times I am re-reading paragraphs to distinguish the two!

The Mirror Twins and the boy with lots of childhood baggage of his own, the boy who later becomes the husband and lover ... what else will be exposed in Mirrorland, Rosemount and Granton Harbour.

9/4/1998 - the big day

The slow revelations are a creepy strip tease. I'm interested!

A library book my wife thought was really good and recommended I take it for a spin, so far so good!

Mirror twins, estranged for twelve years, are drawn together in the old creepy house they grew up in with mom and grandpa, 36 Westeryk Road. Except that one of the twins has disappeared, the other has come home to her distraught husband.

Ellice MacAuley and Catriona Morgan. El and Cat. The Clown Cafe. Yikes!