Book Review - Lethal Lineage by Charlotte Hinger

Thanks to Carl Brookins for the introduction to another good mystery. The list of books I want to read just keeps getting longer, and longer, and longer.....

Lethal Lineage

By Charlotte Hinger

ISBN:978-1-59058-837-6

2011 Release from

Poisoned Pen Press

This is an amazing novel. Almost from the first line, one is interested, entertained, and enthralled. Lottie Albright is a first-class protagonist, a bright, wealthy, well-educated woman with a healthy measure of community sense and human empathy. The fact that she’s now living on the isolated windy plains of northwestern Kansas, second wife of a widowed farmer, only enhances her claim on the reader’s attention.

The author writes with such clarity, precision and verve, one is swept into the lives of these people with intimacy, with love, and with a clear eye on the realities of life in this place in the Twenty-first Century. As isolated as they are, and feel themselves to be, the citizens of four sparsely-populated counties will be touched in tender and horrific ways by larger events happening continents away beginning with a confirmation in a new Episcopal congregation meeting in a new church.

The novel’s  sojourn into the world of historical research, especially Albright’s struggle to deal with the surprises of family history projects is a fascinating and relevant subplot. The characters are all well-laid on and consistent in their roles. All in all an outstanding effort.
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Carl Brookins www.carlbrookins.com  BLOG:  http://agora2.blogspot.com  -BOOKS:  Case of the Great Train Robbery, Reunion, Red Sky