Julia Spencer-Fleming - All Mortal Flesh

Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne's first encounter with Clare Fergusson was in the hospital emergency room on a freezing December night. A newborn infant had been abandoned on the town's Episcopal church steps. If Russ had known that the church had a new priest, he certainly would never have guessed that it would be a woman. Not a woman like Clare. That night in the hospital was the beginning of an attraction so fierce, so forbidden, that the only thing that could keep them safe from compromising their every belief was distance---but in a small town like Millers Kill, distance is hard to find.
Russ Van Alstyne figures his wife kicking him out of their house is nobody's business but his own. Until a neighbor pays a friendly visit to Linda Van Alstyne and finds the woman's body, gruesomely butchered, on the kitchen floor. To the state police, it's an open-and-shut case of a disaffected husband, silencing first his wife, then the murder investigation he controls. To the townspeople, it's proof that the whispered gossip about the police chief and the priest was true. To the powers-that-be in the church hierarchy, it's a chance to control their wayward cleric once and for all.
Obsession. Lies. Nothing is as it seems in Millers Kill, where betrayal twists old friendships and evil waits inside quaint white clapboard farmhouses.

Comment: This is the 5th installment in the series featuring reverend Clare Fergusson and chief police Russ van Alstyne. I have had a great time going through these books, because they have both engaging little mysteries and complex personal development.

Attention: spoilers from previous books will be included.

In this story, following the events from the previous one, Russ has been staying with his mother while his wife Linda thinks of what he told her, about him being in love with someone else. Things are stressful for everyone, including Clare, who didn't plan on loving Russ either and their decision to not see each other again is as hurtful as it would be to not care. Then, things turn upside down when Linda is found murdered in her house and Russ starts a run against the clock to find the culprit and, at the same time, to prove his innocence since several people start wondering if he or Clare did it. However, something evil lurks around and perhaps that is why Linda was killed... but what will happen when the truth is discovered?

Reading this story was quite the ride! The author held nothing back and probably wrote one of the strongest installments in the series, and the only reason I didn't graded it higher is because, clearly, the goal here is to delay certain things, and sometimes that feels a little too manipulative.

The plot is a direct sequel of what happened in the previous book. The mystery investigation is related to definitive and separated situations, each case a new case, but parallel to the investigation we have the development of the characters and those they interact with, and here there is always a lot going on too, and this time, in this book, this aspect of the novels went into a very surprising road. I say surprising in the sense that what happened was somehow expected, but I did not think it would happen now, this way.

Basically, Clare and Russ have worked together in some cases, and their initial friendship blossomed into love, but since he is married, neither wants to compromise integrity and morality by doing something they would be ashamed of. In the last book Russ finally told his wife what he felt and they separated. I kind of expected something like to happen because if the reader is being led into thinking Clare and Russ are that much destined to be together romantically, something needs to happen to allow them to be a couple without shame nor worries, but I thought, then, the way to go would be for him to get a divorce and after a book or two they would assume their relationship.

Well, the author went a step further and Linda, Russ' wife, is killed in the first chapters after an apparent random attack. The investigation begins due to this situation, so that Russ has the chance to investigate what happened and who killed his wife, but it turns out, after a few details become known, things are much more complicated than that and, perhaps, the attack was not that random.

I will have to say, the author did a great job in connecting this case with the personal feelings the protagonists had and the actions they took which, somehow, linked to this again. I think the author was quite clever because the way the plot is sequenced, the reader really sees the story as being linear and then some things happen to prove it wrong. This means there are surprises and some twists happening with frequency and it felt as if the action was non stop.

Added to this, as I've said, the main characters are also dealing with their feelings and this whole thing is happening because Russ and Clare didn't want to betray their personal values nor the commitments they had done; Russ to his wife and Clare to her church. Life isn't that simple and it got to a point they didn't want to lie but they couldn't hide their feelings for one another and this is quite an important par of why the stories have been so appealing to me, the characters have depth and consistency in their personalities.

The investigation also allows for some secondary characters' development and so on, which adds flavor and complexity to the overall plot line. The killer they are looking for ends up being quite another clever twist, which I only started suspecting from a certain scene on, almost at the end of the book. It was quite incredible in a way, because by then of course my attention was on the personal dramas, and that was like a surprise from practically nowhere. Very clever, indeed.

I won't spoil it, but the end was shocking in a way, and mildly surprising in another. I'm quite eager to know what happens next! This series is really quite well thought, well worth the emotional and the time investment, at least until now.

Grade:8/10