The Day That Dusty Died

Rating:
Summary: Vintage Deb Ralston....this is a book that is difficult to
Review: find, even at a rare bookseller.

In it, Deb, who should be just relaxing after foot-surgery, grudgingly agrees to help out temporarily in the Sex Crimes Unit.
She gets involved solving the real reason why a popular sixteen year old would leap from a balcony.

This is tough work for Deb, who's own somewhat dysfunctional childhood keeps surfacing, especially when her younger sister Rhonda turns up, like a bad penny. When Deb's well-meaning mother and a friend of Deb's daughter Becky (the friend has turned to prostitution) are woven into the story, the tale becomes cathartic for victims of sexual abuse, and gives the reader a sense of how difficult it is for the police who try to
solve these cases.

I found it to be an excellent of Lee Martin's writing of some of her own experiences through the eyes of her heroine, much like her other works, and felt the somber tone was in keeping with the nature of these crimes.

Read it if you can get your hands on it!

Rating:
Summary: My Only Disappointment from this otherwise wonderful writer
Review: Lee Martin is, in my opinion, one of the best mystery writers of the last 20 years of the twentieth century. Her character, Deb Ralston, is both engaging and does what reaches me: uses her own religious faith (as it is in the process of developing, in this series of books) to help her solve the crimes she is working on. This is one of the rare Police Procedural series where the protagonist is married, has a family, and what happens with them is equally important to the plot.
Unfortunately, this book was the one disappointment I had in this series. There is no question that this book was a personal testimony of Ms. Martin, as she is/was working through her own experience of being molested while a child.
But because this was so personal a story, the story itself became a screed, rather than a great story (which categorizes all of her other books.)
I'm sure it would be helpful to those who are working through their own negative experiences as children. But as a mystery story, it was not a good offering.