nomadreader

The backstory: I raced through the first two Keye Street mystery novels by Amanda Kyle Williams last fall and loved them both (see my reviews of The Stranger You Seek  and Stranger in the Room .) When I visited Atlanta, where the series is set, in February, I treated myself and read the galley on my trip (y'all know I love to read books in the city in which they're set!) The basics: When the Hitichi County sheriff calls Atlanta FBI profiler turned private investigator Keye Street about a possible serial killer, she travels to the lakeside, rural Georgia town to try to solve the murders of two thirteen-year-old girls killed ten years apart and discovered in the same grave in a wooded area. My thoughts: The further along writers get in series, the harder it can be to keep things fresh. In this third installment of the Keye Street series, the first thirty pages are so are a glimpse into Keye's personal and professional life. The reader is treated to her current living si...

The backstory: Stranger in the Room  is the second in the Keye Street series. I raved about the first, The Stranger You Seek, last week .  The basics: Miki, Keye Street's globe-trotting photographer cousin, comes home to see a man in her house and bolts. She's felt someone watching her off and on for years, but given her history of drug use and psychiatric hospitals, the police may not have followed up properly. Meanwhile, Rouse is investigating the death of a thirteen-year-old whose body was left in plain sight. Keye is also keeping busy with her P.I. business and treks to North Georgia to investigate a crematorium. My thoughts: I tend to approach the second novel in a series with trepidation. As a reader, I seek out series partly for elements of the familiar, but I also seek them out with a desire to keep being surprised. If the structure and end are too similar, I fear other books will only include more of the same. Delightfully, Stranger in the Room  is a very ...