Review for My Sister’s Grave by Robert Dugoni

An Interesting story

4 stars

Tracy Crosswhite becomes obsessed with finding out who really murdered her sister, Sarah.  She doesn’t believe Edmund House is the killer, even though there’s a trial and conviction.

Tracy becomes a Seattle homicide detective, making it her life’s work to get the bad guys because she blames herself for Sarah’s death.  As she works getting justice for victims over the next twenty years, she gathers facts about her sister’s case.

This book starts out slow, but midway through it picks up the pace and there are several surprises, many unknown facts are discovered, and there’s a great ending.  The beginning is about the childhood of the girls, their friends, and Sarah’s death as a teen.

When Sarah’s remains are finally found, it throws the small town of Cedar Grove back into chaos as everyone remembers the day she disappeared twenty years earlier and the ensuing trial.  Tracy reunites with some of her childhood friends at Sarah’s funeral.  One, Dan O’Leary, is a lawyer who takes all the files she’s collected over the years and, at her urging, goes over the facts.  Between the two of them and the facts, they decide the wrong man is in prison and start a process to get him released.  This opens up another assortment of problems and surprises that will change the way Tracy has seen things all her life.

This book has a little romance, a lot of suspense and is gruesome in places, but not more than you’d expect from a murder mystery.  There’s good character description and some devious citizens, which add to the story.  The reader will discover that things aren’t always as simple as they seem.

I could also picture the blizzard that takes over the town at the worst possible moment.  There are good depictions all through this book.

The only part that puzzled me about this story was a couple of chapters toward the end when the dead sister is talking.  Somehow, I think it would have seemed more natural if perhaps Tracy was thinking about what her sister would have done in the situation.  It just seemed strange to me that the sister who has been gone for twenty years would be stepping in to tell her part of the story.  That’s why I’m giving it four stars.

Nevertheless, this was still a good book and I’d like to read something else by this author.