In the Garden of Souls

Reviewer Clare O'Beara - Fresh Fiction:

I was interested in a crime set around ballet. To start with we see a young dancer who dies when a fire is started in a warehouse where she practises, and she is trapped inside. Nobody but her mother believes that she was locked in the building. The mother engages a pair of ex-cop PIs, a man and woman who have tired of the usual infidelity cases.

I don't know why the setting is a few decades ago, except that this means we do not get overloaded with gadgetry, net searches and cameras; like Sue Grafton's PI, we find every surveillance done the hard way.

A second young dancer is assaulted and dumped on the street but saved, and bravely returns to her art. The peculiarity is that the two crimes occur on the West Coast but the investigation immediately shifts to New York.

Characters are to the fore in this interesting tale and the main persons are the two PIs who come through challenges to learn what they really mean to each other. I hope this is the start of a series.