The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh 302 pages

The Weight of Blood is set in the fictitious town of Henbane, Missouri deep in the Ozark Mountains. When Lucy Dane was a baby her mother disappeared and was never seen or heard from again. Twenty years later Lucy’s friend Cheri also disappears but then her body is discovered in a tree. Lucy, seeing several similarities between the two crimes decides to investigate. With the help of her friend Daniel, Lucy will uncover long buried secrets most especially within her own family.  

There were several reasons besides the actual story why I really liked this book. Sometimes I like knowing right off the bat who the bad guy is. And while the author didn’t come right out and tell us who done it, she did nothing to misdirect our thoughts. Plus I would have had a hard time believing that a 17 year old still in school, having lived all her life in a small town, and having had very little life experience would know how to crack a 20 year old cold case .Fortunately she didn’t have to. All it took were a few bumbling attempts at detection to bring to light the town’s secrets, secrets that everyone knew about but chose not to talk about. And most mysteries end with the protagonist in a fight for his or her life just before they get the bad guy. The Weight of Blood was resolved with barely a whimper and I might add in a very satisfying way.

The Weight of Blood is well written, the subject matter is intense and sometimes not easy to deal with and the characters are real enough to relate to. Really good read!

The Purity of Vengeance by Jussi Adler-Olsen 500 pages

Detective Carl Mørck and his assistants Assad and Rose work for the Danish Police in Department Q a cold case unit housed in the basement of police headquarters. The Purity of Vengeance moves back and forth between 1987 and the story of Nete Hermansen detailing the abuse she suffered at the hands of a secret organization and 2010 where Mørck is investigating several cases of missing people who vanished over twenty years ago during the same weekend. Eventually they discover a link to Nete and the missing people. 

 I really love this series but this was not one of my favorites. Maybe Adler-Olsen was trying to offset the seriousness of the subject matter with his forced and repetitious attempts at humor (very unlike the previous books in the series) or maybe it was the downward spiral into schizophrenic like behavior for his assistant Rose or maybe even it was the subject matter that was based on actual events in history. But for whatever reason I’ll still be first in line for the next installment.