Sunday, September 11, 2016

Forget Me Not by John Hemmings ***

 In Forget Me Not by John Hemmings Mark Kane and his assistant Lucy solve crimes in the Boston area. This case is about a lady, wife, mother who died of Alzheimer’s shortly after being reunited with her daughter who was given up for adoption before her marriage. She leaves half her considerable and personal estate to the daughter. Not surprisingly the husband and sons question the bona fides of the daughter. Enter our private investigator Kane and his assistant Lucy.

What follows is an ordinary investigation and mystery with the requisite plot twists and turns. It was available as a free Kindle book as an introduction to the series. Try it, you might like it.

Two caveats:

First, much of the opening chapters involve a convoluted setup to prevent DNA testing from being the obvious solution to the mystery about whether the daughter is genuine. This includes cremating the lady, having all her relatives predeceased, adopting the two sons of her marriage, etc. Thus the long introduction is more about setup than sleuthing.

Second, while several crimes are uncovered and solved, none of them are brought to justice. I found this odd. I did not see anything in Mark Kane’s character development to indicate that he would play judge and jury and decide to pardon everyone. This seemed to be a radical result from nowhere.

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