Where Sebastian Faces Some Real Darkness

Where the Dead Lie by C.S. Harris
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love this whole series, and this might be my favorite out of the 12 I've read. Top 2 or 3 for sure--though that's a tough call.

But it's also very hard to read.

I would never say that this very well-written series is exactly "cozy." Even though I usually enjoy reading these books before going to sleep (which is, to me, one indication) there are many other series that fit that label better. But it's also usually not too brutal (bearing in mind that there are deaths in every one). So it's not Murder She Wrote--far from it--but it's not Criminal Minds, either. However, this particular book could have been a Criminal Minds episode, complete with serial killer and genuine suspense. It's tough in spots. The murderer abducts children, tortures them, and then kills them. It's fiction, but it's real, you know? Such things happen. And it's horrible to face it and think about it.

Anyway, even though I had to quit watching Criminal Minds at some point because I couldn't take the misery portrayed in the stories, this is still very readable, and I'm trying to work out why I felt that way. Good people are working to save the kids, and despite the darkness there's a ribbon of hope spooling out through the whole story. I feel like the author balanced the difficulty of the subject matter with the grit, direct action, commitment, anger, and bravery we need as a reader to follow along. It's well done, and though it has a complex conclusion, I found the ending satisfying, and I'm eager to look at the next one.

Just as an aside: there's some discussion of the writings of the Marquis de Sade here, and at first I thought it was going to be simple and moralistic (which woulda been totally okay in this context, though not terribly edifying), but it ended up being surprisingly nuanced. I learned some stuff. So that was cool.

I think there are at least 3 stories waiting on the edges of this one: 1) Dr. Gibson needs to get off drugs; 2) One unexpected death was surely not due to natural causes, and I think I know who did it; and 3) Sebastian's niece is gonna need help with her horrible husband.

This is also my wish list for stuff to be solved in the next book. However, the author has her own way of timing things, and since everything so far has been very well done, I'll just wait to see how she manages it.

Recommended.

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