Clare O’Dey is running away from an abusive husband when she is hired by a stranger, Malcolm Boon to help locate a missing woman in Blackmore.
Blackmore is a former mining town which experienced a mine blast five years ago where 17 people were killed. Since the explosion the town has deteriorated to the point that buildings, stores and homes are abandoned and drugs and alcohol are a common problem.
Clare is hired to locate Shayna, a drug addicted wife and daughter who has been missing for 3 weeks. She poses as a photographer and is able to befriend several of the locals as she investigates Shayna’s whereabouts.
This is a convoluted story which i found confusing and frustrating after getting half way through. I finished it but would not recommend it. ( )

Still The One
Review of the Simon & Schuster Kindle eBook edition (March 1, 2016) released shortly after the Simon & Schuster paperback (2016*).

It seemed a ridiculous proposition to trust this stranger, but what were her options? Go forward, her mother used to say. Take whatever option moves you forward. Never go back.

I read Amy Stuart's latest novel A Death at the Party (March 7, 2023) as I was especially drawn in by its "Virginia Woolf meets Agatha Christie" advertising. I quite enjoyed that read and rated it 4-stars in my Secrets Lead to Murder review. Encouraged by GR friend Berengaria's 4.5 star review of Stuart's first book Still Mine I went for that as well and was not disappointed.

Still Mine is somewhat deceptive as its set up premise is mysterious. A lone woman named Clare O'Dey shows up in a former coal mining town somewhere in the western mountainous part of North America. Although Stuart is a Canadian writer, the location of the fictitious town of Blackmore is not specified, so Canadian readers can imagine it as being in Canada and American readers can imagine it in the U.S. We soon discover that O'Dey is not her real name and that she is working (perhaps somewhat unwillingly) in partnership with a character named Malcolm, who hovers in the background and only meets with Clare periodically.

Clare is in the town to attempt to locate a woman named Shayna who has been missing for several weeks. There are suspicious characters aplenty in the town ranging from the woman's father who is wrapped up in an escalating land feud with a neighbour, the mother who is suffering from dementia, a local drug dealer, the woman's ex-husband and his present girl friend, the local town doctor, etc.

The solution to the search for Shayna becomes somewhat guessable as information is doled out gradually and some interspersed diary entries appear. The more interesting part of the book for me was the backstory mystery of who is Clare really, why is she working with Malcolm and what is the reason behind how he convinced her to take on this somewhat dangerous work? For a first novel, I thought this was well done and I especially enjoyed its unorthodox approach to an investigation.

Footnote
* For some reason, GR lists this as "First published May 5, 2015." I can't find any trace of such an earlier edition.

Trivia and Links
In an introduction to a listing of her favourite Canadian mystery books or series, Amy Stuart mentions about writing Still Mine: "I picked the mountains as the setting because they felt particularly foreign to me. In my writer’s mind, I imagined my protagonist, Clare O’Dey, driving up the mountain road, its twists and turns a harbinger of what awaited her in the fictional town of Blackmore. While I never situated Blackmore specifically in Canada, many great mystery writers have chosen Canadian locales as the backdrop for their stories." Read the rest of the article at The Strand Magazine April 21, 2016.

Amy Stuart’s Still series was optioned for a television adaptation which was announced in August 2020. See the article at the CBC. As that was in the early months of the COVID pandemic, there haven't been any updates since that time. There is a placeholder at IMDb called the Untitled Cobie Smulders/Amy Stuart Project where you can watch for possible progress. Presumably actor Cobie Smulders (best known as SHIELD Agent Maria Hill in the Marvel movies) would have played the Clare role. ( )

The beginning of this story is a little slow. There was a lot happening, but I didn’t feel ever really invested in the character of Clare. The reader needed to know more about her and how she ended up investigating Shayna’s life. There was lots of information about Shayna and the town…but not nearly enough about Clare. The story is both dark and disturbing and not a bad read at all. A lot of threads are left hanging so hopefully the story will be continued. ( )

A page-turner for sure, and as such, a speedy read. Clare O'Dey (not her real name) is on an unofficial (sketchy) investigative assignment to find missing woman Shayna Fowles. Despite having no investigative training or any vested interest, Clare finds herself as a subcontractor to Malcolm Boon, her mysterious employer, who tells her little more than some background info on Shayna and to head to Blackmore, a mining town in the mountains of ? Never sure....So Clare sets out with her rickety car, a duffel of her worldly goods and a lot of emotional baggage and secrets. Blackmore is not a healthy place for her. Filled with rage, vendettas, and prescription drugs, the town is on its last legs after a mine explosion 5 years earlier. Clare poses as a photographer (sketchy) and tries to fit in with the locals which she is pretty capable of doing, at least on the substance abuse front. The locals include: Shayna's hunky ex-husband, Jared, suspect # 1, the yuppie-ish town doctor, Derek who is kind of odd, not to mention Charlie Merritt, the local drug-dealer, Sara, her "friend" and Shayna's own parents, Louise (dementia) and Wilfred, a little unhinged. Clare hangs out with this crew, getting a little more embroiled than is "professional," but within 5 days, makes more headway than the cops. The landscape itself is ominous: a gorge with a thousand foot drop, the abandoned mine shaft, and though it is July, it is perpetually cold and dark. Meanwhile Clare is struggling emotionally because this all hits too close to home, since she is a runaway from an abusive husband herself (and a former drug addict). The narrative parts are interspersed with a first-person frantic account of fear and running, but it is not clear until the end who is speaking and whom is being spoken to. It's a good suspense builder, though. Everything comes together dramatically at the end, solving the mystery of Shayna, but setting up a sequel for sure for Clare. It's entertaining and compelling, but a little hard to swallow, especially the quick timeline. ( )

Clare is running away from something. Malcolm finds her and hires her to find a missing woman, Shayna. When Clare arrives in Blackmore, she finds a town that has been decimated by an explosion at the mine years earlier. The town also has a drug problem and several possible suspects as to the disappearance and possible murder of Shayna.
As Clare keeps digging into Shayna’s life, she finds herself in real danger herself.
You may not guess who the person responsible is, and why. You should also be concerned for Clare’s safety. This book kept me guessing, and the tension was palpable throughout the entire story, ending in a sinister note.
To be continued in book 2!
#StillMine #AmyStuart ( )