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When former forensic photographer Miranda Rhoads moves to the seaside town of Lost Beach, she decides to make her living as a wildlife photographer, putting crime scenes behind her. But her plans are quickly upended when she comes across a couple sleeping in a canoe, entwined in an embrace. Looking closer, she realizes the man and woman aren’t asleep – they’ve been murdered.
Detective Joel Breda sets out to find answers – not only about the unidentified victims in the marshy death scene but also about the aloof and beautiful photographer who seems to know more about his investigation than he does.
As they begin to unravel the motivation of a merciless serial killer, Miranda and Joel must race against the clock to make an arrest before the killer finds them first.
Rating: Narration – C+; Content – B-
Flight is book two in Laura Griffin’s Texas Murder Files series; I read book one, Hidden, when it came out last year but the two are only connected tangentially (the heroines are sisters) so Flight works perfectly well as a standalone. I’ve enjoyed a number of books by this author, but – and I had this issue with the previous book in the series as well – the balance between the two elements of the story is unequal and the plot is developed at the expense of the romance. Fortunately, the plot in Flight is interesting and well-developed enough to have held my interest, and as usual, Ms. Griffin provides lots of interesting background about forensics and police procedures.
Blaming herself when a mistake by one of her team led to the collapse of the case against a child-murderer, CSI Miranda Rhoads – a specialist in forensic photography – quit her job, took up a teaching position in San Antonio and moved to the Texas seaside town of Lost Beach hoping to regroup and centre herself again. She likes the slower pace and the quiet, and is (sort of) making a living as a nature photographer – which is why she’s out on the marshes at the crack of dawn waiting for the perfect shot when she finds a canoe tethered in the reeds… containing the dead bodies of a young couple, their arms entwined as though in sleep, a feather held in one of the young woman’s hands.
When Detective Joel Breda arrives at the scene, he’s annoyed to discover that they’re still waiting for the forensic team to arrive – and with a storm about to break they risk losing evidence. He questions the woman who found the bodies, and is impressed by her eye for detail and no-nonsense manner – and even moreso when, as she’s leaving to go home, she tells him to make sure the CSIs bag the woman’s hands because of the feather.
Later that day, Joel and his colleague Nicole – a trainee detective – are examining the photos from the scene – which he’s surprised to discover were sent in by the “photographer lady” rather than their own forensic team (who haven’t provided any yet). He wastes no time in looking her up and then going out to the house she’s renting to ask her a few follow-up questions – and then to ask her if she’ll agree to come on staff, temporarily, to work the investigation. Lost Beach PD hasn’t had a CSI on staff in months and with tourism ramping up for the summer, they’re already stretched thin and could really do with the help.
Miranda turns him down – but that doesn’t stop her from doing a bit of sleuthing on her own when she drops into the local nature centre to see if she can find out what bird the feather came from. Finding out it came from an endangered species is one surprise. Another is the news that she’s not the first person to have asked questions about an exotic feather found at the scene of a murder. Around a year earlier, a property developer was killed, a feather was found at the scene and his murderer has never been caught. Could the feathers form some sort of message? Miranda doesn’t know, but she takes the information to Joel – and then agrees to take the job.
As the team digs deeper, they discover other unsolved murders that may be linked to the case, and the possible involvement of a group of environmental activists – and when Miranda is targeted, it’s clear there is someone out there willing to go to great lengths to keep their involvement a secret.
The mystery in Flight is nicely done – intriguing and well-paced with some good twists along the way, and the relationship between Joel and Miranda works fairly well (better than the romance in the previous book), because the author sets it up early on rather than leaving it to the last minute, and the attraction between them hums along in the background right from their first meeting. The thing about it that didn’t work for me however, was Miranda going to bed with Joel – and then telling him they shouldn’t have done it and that they can’t do it again. And then doing it again. And then saying they shouldn’t have done it and can’t do it again. And then doing it again. Maybe she should have put the brakes on BEFORE they got jiggy rather than after?
I did enjoy the story, but the characters aren’t all that well defined and are nothing I haven’t read before several (hundred) times over. Joel is a good guy – honest, reliable, protective and super hot, with a broken heart in his past that he’s put behind him; Miranda is spunky and better at her job than anyone else (and good at sending mixed signals – see above) and is trying to get over her burn-out.
Teri Clark Linden is an accomplished narrator, with over 200 titles to her credit at Audible in a variety of genres, but this is the first time I’ve listened to her. Her voice is clear and easy to listen to, her pacing is good and her performance is expressive overall; the dialogues are performed in a very naturalistic way and she keeps things moving nicely. But she doesn’t have a wide variety of ‘character voices’ and portrays male and female characters at more or less the same pitch, so I needed to rely on dialogue tags a lot of the time. I did like Ms. Linden’s interpretation of Miranda – her intelligence and her vulnerability really come through in the performance – and where she uses regional accents for characters, she uses them consistently.
This is the first time I’ve listened to an audiobook review copy via the NetGalley Shelf app, and I don’t know whether it was something to do with the app or a deliberate choice on the part of the publisher to discourage piracy or whatever, but the sound quality wasn’t that great. It was treble-heavy and a bit tinny, and I noticed a few instances of background noise in the early stages; I received the copy after publication so I have to assume it was the retail version.
Ultimately, Flight was a bit of a mixed bag. I liked the story, but the characters were a bit bland, and I can only say that the narration was ‘okay’. I freely admit however, that very few female narrators work for me these days, so YMMV. I will probably continue with the Texas Murder Files – but in print.
This review originally appeared at AudioGals.
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