Cold Black Earth
By Sam Reaves
2015
Amazon Prime

Rachel Lindstrom left her hometown in rural Western Illinois 8 years ago to pursue her dreams. After 3 years in Iraq and a failed marriage, Rachel returns home in late November to consider her options moving forward. She needed a rest. Her timing for a homecoming could not have been worse. An oddball assortment of old High School friends and old suitors are fun....until Otis Ryle escapes from a psych unit at a nearby correctional center. Otis has a past in this rural town and is returning to heal, as well.....
Suspenseful, sinister, with an ending you won't see coming.Recommended. ( )

Rachel Lindstrom has had a difficult year. She is newly divorced from her Lebanese husband and has resigned, in protest, from her embassy job overseas. Her life is a mess, and so she has come home to the family farm in central Illinois, to find peace and rest. But after the death of her parents and the fracturing of her brother's family in the old farmhouse, it no longer seems like home. Trying to mediate family problems and at the same time figure our her own future would be enough stress, but added to that is a recently escaped serial killer and a rash of murders in the area and the Lindstrom farm is in the center of it all - in more ways than one. The characters are complex and well developed and Reaves does a great job locating the story geographically and building empathy for the characters. It is a quick read with enough suspense to keep you turning pages. Perhaps the best compliment I can pay him is that I usually have these figured out before the end - but he threw me a curve and I missed it completely. A well developed plot that provides plenty of twists - a great story! ( )

After a failed marriage and 20 years of working overseas, Rachel returned to her childhood home hoping that farm life would release pent up stress and allow her to reunite with her brother and nephew. Expecting serenity she is, instead, entangled in a murder mystery. As killings begin to randomly occur, she notices her nephew acting very strangely. When he asks her to help him out of a difficult situation, Rachel finds herself in the murderer’s crosshairs with nowhere to turn.

Reaves had me eagerly turning pages to find out whodunit, while the surprise ending left me reeling.

Highly recommended for adults.

Book review link: https://shouldireaditornot.wordpress.com/2017/08/11/cold-black-earth-sam-reaves/ ( )