Mariah Stewart - Mercy Street

On a balmy spring evening, four high school seniors–three boys and a girl–enter a park in the small Pennsylvania city of Conroy. The next morning, two of the boys are found shot to death, and the girl and the third boy are gone. After three weeks with no leads and no sign of either of the two missing teenagers, the chief of police begins to wonder if they too were victims. But with no other suspects, the authorities conclude that one of these kids was the shooter.
The missing boy’s grandmother, a secretary at the local parish church, maintains his innocence. On her behalf, the parish priest, Father Kevin Burch, hires former detective Mallory Russo as a private investigator to figure out what happened in the park that night. Mallory had ended her nine-year stint with the Conroy police force some time ago after becoming a target of a smear campaign. Now a true-crime author, Mallory is surprised to receive the priest’s offer–and highly intrigued by the case. She can’t help but accept the challenge–especially when she learns that her investigation will be financed by Father Burch’s cousin the reclusive billionaire Robert Magellan, a man whose own wife and infant son disappeared without a trace a year ago, a man who understands the heartache of not knowing what happened to a loved one.
Detective Charlie Wanamaker is facing another sort of tragedy. He fled Conroy years ago with no plans to return to what he considered a dying factory town–until a family emergency brought him back. Finding the situation much worse than he’d thought, he trades his job as a big-city detective for one with the Conroy police department. Assigned to the park shooting case, Charlie quickly realizes that the initial investigation left a lot of questions unanswered. Unofficially, he teams up with Mallory to uncover the truth and find the two kids, dead or alive. What Charlie and Mallory discover will take them down a twisted path that leads to an old unsolved murder–and justice for a killer with a heart of stone.

Comment: Yet another book I have had in the pile for a long time. In fact, I have another book by this author to read as well, but it's from a different series (more romance centered), and I've decided to get to this one first. 

In this romantic suspense, we meet Robert Magellan, a very wealthy man who invented something like google (if I understood correctly), but his life for the past year has been terrible since his wife and baby son disappeared and no clue whatsoever has been found. Despite this, he is still able to help his friends, namely Father Kevin, who asks him for help to pay for a PI, so that the murder of two teenagers and the disappearance of two others can be investigated. 

In comes Mallory Russo, an ex-cop who resigned some time ago and is now writing a book, but decides to be a PI, and her ex boss at the police station lets her know a new detective is coming to help. 

That detective is Charlie Wanamaker, who decided to relocate so he could be closer to his mother and younger autistic sister. As the two of them team up, the antagonism of the other cops against Mallory continues, but they need to focus on finding the missing teenagers... could it be that there is something else going on that no one is seeing?

In the short summary above, I think I've managed to convey a little of that this book had ongoing and why I think the execution wasn't as great as I'd have liked: there are too many elements vying for attention and I don't think the author developed them all properly. Perhaps less things or a slower introduction of elements in a bigger book? To me, the elements are all interesting, but at the end all seemed rather superficial. I suppose some will be continued in further installments - namely what happened to Robert's family - but the way this story was written feels a little off.

The main plot is related to the investigation of the teenagers and as Mallory and Charlie talk to people and connect the dots, it becomes obvious that the police had not done the best job. Here and there we are also told about the prejudice the other cops have against Mallory but we only really learn why closer to the end. This situation means some cops try to make Mallory seem like an incompetent cop, when in reality it becomes very clear right away it's the opposite.

Mallory is a fascinating character and we learn several things about her as the story moves along, which of course makes her seem more and more like a heroine. If there is one flaw to her is that she is a bit lone wolf, which means she is slow to trust others. I don't mind these tactics of developing a character by presenting them a certain way and we can see the slow change but in this situation, it meant that when we are told her feelings are changing, I struggled to believe that.

This leads me to the romance. It becomes obvious there will be a romance between Mallory and Charlie and there are, if I remember well, two or three scenes with them in situations which can be perceived as romantic or part of a romantic situation but in my opinion that isn't enough to make me believe they are falling in love. I know that's the intention and this series seems to be going in the direction of suspense first, romance secondary, but... if the element is there, why not doing something better with it, and if the technique is to make if in such a way that the reader reads between the lines, then the scenes need to be better done too.

Charlie is also an interesting character, mainly because of his family life and there is enough information about this to make us sympathetic to him and to what he is doing to make certain his mother and sister have help. I wouldn't say, however, that this is enough to paint him as a hero that easily, and while he is a competent cop, one who recognizes Mallory's efforts and ability, which is great in a hero, isn't also enough to make me think he is so much better than anyone else. Perhaps, in part, I had this feeling because others seem worse yes, by comparison and not because Charlie is naturally that better.

As the story advances, we keep having this and that glimpse of other characters, there's also a secondary situation regarding a shooter in the city (which is actually such an obvious situation, I can't understand why the author delayed and presented things the way she did), and we see Robert's assistant doing some things too, and everything together made for a very convoluted story, one I sometimes struggled to be focused on. Again, most elements are actually great, but the way they were developed not as much as I hoped for.

It's also not a big surprise that the investigation about the teenagers ends up being rather easy to solve.

Since the next books in the series feature different protagonists, I suppose Mallory and Charlie won't have much air time, meaning their romance was done here? If so, I think this is a very poorly presented element, after all... regarding Robert and his family, that situation probably will have some news in the following books, but I cannot say I'm that eager to find out.

I just hope the other book in a different series by this author will be better.

Grade: 6/10