Read this great novel, My Sister’s Grave by Robert Dugoni, and really enjoyed it. I grabbed it after seeing an advert for Dugoni’s latest, and wanted to go back to the start of the series – yep, I’m one of those. Can’t just dive in at any point, have to go right back to the start and see things through as the author intended. So, this is the first book in Dugoni’s Tracy Crosswhite series, and it will certainly not be the last Crosswhite adventure I read – principally because of the grand ethical question posed to the reader as the book reaches its exciting climax.
Without further ado… SPOILERS. Big ones. Don’t read on, if you don’t want to know!
Crosswhite is a Seattle police detective whose sister was kidnapped and murdered 20 years ago, and the whole case comes back to the surface when her sister’s body is finally found and things don’t quite add up. There is a man in jail for the murder, Edmund House, serving life, thanks to a guilty verdict based on circumstantial evidence and a rather inconsistent legal case. Crosswhite doesn’t think he did it, thinks he was framed as part of a wider conspiracy, and enlists the help of an old friend, now criminal defence lawyer, to start in motion the wheels for a retrial. As the story progresses, the original conviction is unravelled, and it becomes obvious that a conspiracy was the reason House ended up behind bars, the local law enforcement and the victim’s father joining forces to put House away for good.
We as readers are so set up throughout to question exactly the motives of the conspirators, and get us questioning who may really have killed her and why. The motion for a retrial is so successful that House is immediately freed, the Judge appalled at the miscarriage of justice.
Then things start to go wrong. The original conspirators are attacked, and Crosswhite is kidnapped. Edmund House is revealed to have been behind it all along, and Crosswhite has inadvertently fought for the freedom of her sister’s killer.
And here’s the question, and where the tables are turned.
The conspirators reveal that they did frame House for the murder. House confessed to the crimes off the record, but it couldn’t be used in trial because of issues with admissibility. So to make sure that it couldn’t happen to anyone else, that the town could move on again after such a heinous crime had been perpetrated in its midst, the authorities made sure House was convicted.
By the time House was on the run again at the end of the book, and the truth had all come out, my own feelings towards the conspirators had gone 180 degrees, and now a couple of days after finishing it, they might have moved again to rest somewhere in the middle. Truth is, I haven’t a clue where I stand.
Do you go by the book, knowing you did the right thing but also knowing that you can’t stop further bad things from happening?
Or do you break the rules, live with the risks, and know that you ignored the traditional boundaries of right and wrong to make sure that overall good is the result?
I haven’t a clue.
I can’t possibly say that the police did the right thing… but I can’t also say for sure they did the wrong thing.
And that’s what I love about books like this in particular – books that challenge the reader, and make them confront difficult feelings of their own, make us make difficult choices and make us think about what would be deemed as ‘right’ in the most tragic and disastrous of circumstances. What is the cost of justice? What is the cost of doing the right thing?
It certainly made for a compelling read, and left me asking myself questions long into the night – and in that sense I could only recommend the book very highly. Haven’t a clue where Crosswhite goes from here, but itching to find out.
Rob Parker 