Interesting main character. Very well done. ( )

4.5 stars

Fans of police procedurals do not want to miss Carrie Smith's Silent City, the first installment in the Claire Codella Mystery series. With a well-drawn cast of characters and an impossible to solve murder, this well-written and intriguing mystery provides readers a fascinating behind the scenes look at educational infighting and politics when new principal Hector Sanchez is murdered.

Claire Codella's first case when she returns to work following her intensive and aggressive treatment for cancer is an unexpected high profile murder investigation into Hector's murder. Paired up with newly promoted Eduardo Munoz, both detectives have a lot to prove to their co-workers and they, along with Codella's former partner, Brian Haggerty, follow numerous leads in their search for Sanchez's killer. The staging of his body makes it appear that his murder is connected to his job as principal at PS 777 and the three investigators quickly learn there are many suspects who had motive to kill him.

Codella is an intelligent detective whose new boss is not exactly her biggest fan. Despite his attempts to undermine her authority, she has managed to pull together an excellent team of investigators. Codella has a precise way of doing things and she follows the evidence instead of hunches. She is clever and resourceful and although she is still just getting back in the swing of things, Codella relentlessly pursues any and all leads in the case.

Munoz and Haggerty are also excellent investigators, but most importantly, they are loyal to Codella. Munoz is also new to the squad and unfortunately, he is enduring some malicious harassment from one of his fellow detectives. Haggerty was Codella's partner for seven years and right before her cancer diagnosis, she transferred out of their squad following an unpleasant altercation with him. He is hoping this case will heal the rift between them and although things are tense at first, they quickly put aside any residual animosity and concentrate on the case.

Codella is a little surprised to discover that Sanchez was not as beloved as everyone has been lead to believe. Many of the staff at PS 777 disliked him due to his impossibly high standards, unfair performance assessments and bullying tactics toward staff members. Sanchez also recently clashed with Superintendent Margery Barton over the proposed implementation of a software program to help individualize student learning. Secrets and lies often hinder the investigation but Codella skillfully ferrets out the truth and doggedly pursues the clues where they lead.

Silent City is a compelling mystery with an engaging storyline and appealing characters. With plenty of suspects, no clear cut motive for the crime and stunning plot twists, Carrie Smith skillfully conceals the killer's identity until the novel's astonishing conclusion. It is an excellent beginning to the Claire Codella Mystery series that I greatly enjoyed and highly recommend to fans of the genre. ( )

I'm counting this as read even though I stopped reading. The writing was childish as was the dialogue. The plot seemed like so many bad tv cop shows and the characters were one dimensional.

There are authors that have no capability to write good books. There are plots that just cannot work. And there are books that should have never been written. When you read one of those, when you see a plot like that, when you meet an author like that, you are sorry for losing your time on a book and you just move on.

And then there are the books that have a good plot for most of the book, with an author that manages to keep it tight and readable for most of the book and still manages to make you really dislike the book. And these are the most annoying ones - it could have been a good book and it just did not work. This one is one of these books.

A mystery set in New York usually uses the town to its advantage - New York is such a diverse place that you can use it to help you build the story, to add an accent to something, to show something instead of telling it. Carrie Smith's New York is unrecognizable - even Broadway sounds like "Main Street, Somewhere else". We know we are in New York - she tells us often enough but we could have been in "Anyplace, Anystate" and nothing would have changed in the story.

I could overlook that if she had not proceeded through the checklist of what a story must have - a rookie gay detective that is picked on by the department bullies but manages to ignore them and prove he is better both as a person and professionally, a recently transferred female detective that is hated in her new department (where everyone is lazy and she is really so much more intelligent than all of them), ex-partners that are in love but not admitting it, you name it, it was probably there.

The plot showed promise - the principal of a not-so-well doing school is found dead and Claire Codella is called, on her first day back on the job after surviving cancer to deal with it. The principal's body is staged to look crucified and everyone in his life seems to be keeping secrets - his boss, his coworkers, his neighbors. Add to that a software company that tries to make a big deal with the New York School system and there are now both money and personal feelings involved (and way too many people cheating on someone and feeling guilty because of that). So for most of the books, we follow Codella interviewing suspects:
1. Ask a question
2. Person answering lies
3. Codella leaves.
4. Someone else says something during their interview and Codella realizes that the person lied
5. Meet the same person again to ask them why they lied.

Every single person she talks to follows that pattern - noone tells the truth from the start. Some of them more that once.

Somewhere around there, a second body shows up, more secrets and lies are discovered and by the time we learn who the killer was, I really did not care. There is no foreshadowing, no links and pointers - out of the blue one of the people that was a suspect but was never really that visible or problematic shows up with a gun and a partner - we never get the explanation of the staging, motives are somewhat clearer but still pretty sketchy and most of what happens in the book remains irrelevant.

In the meantime,we also need to deal with the detective and her personal life. From behaving like a 10 years old when her partner kisses her (transferring to a new department and then not talking to him even while dealing with cancer) to getting a call in the middle of a murder investigation and going in alone, the "intelligent" detective sounds everything but (but then the plot cannot move if that does not happen). And then just like that, after months of not talking, it takes 2 minutes and they are falling into each other hands - badly handled, badly executed and absolutely abrupt.

Disappointing. It has some good parts but overall disappointing. ( )