SINS OF OUR FATHERS

A. Rose Mathieu, Bold Strokes Books, Softcover $16.95 (264pp), 978-1-62639-873-3 This novel seamlessly blends a ghastly murder mystery with an intriguing romance.

A thematically compelling journey through a town’s dark underbelly, Mathieu, is an excellent blend of mystery and romance.

Shirking her wealthy upbringing at every chance, attorney Elizabeth Campbell has opted to dedicate her life to representing underserved populations instead of the high-profile clients served by her father’s law firm. Charged with reinvestigating the gruesome murder of a Catholic priest, allegedly committed by a man with a severely diminished IQ, Campbell soon finds herself at the heart of a much larger conspiracy.

In addition to dealing with an ever-growing stream of murders, Campbell must also contend with her feelings for steely yet attractive Detective Grace Donovan. An initial opponent to Campbell’s reopened case, Donovan also finds herself struggling to keep their relationship work-appropriate. A mystery spanning from the concentration camps of WWII to an abandoned Catholic school unfolds, leaving the two women to grapple with its consequences.

Sins of Our Fathers is excellently paced, introducing characters and situations in a way that allows for their natural extrapolation as the novel progresses. While the case that Campbell is charged with reinvestigating initially appears to be an open-and-shut claim, larger forces are shown to have influenced it. The novel weaves together a political and religious world outside of the courts.

Mathieu herself represented underserved populations as an attorney much like her protagonist, and she infuses Sins of Our Fathers with the technical accuracy of the legal system—flaws and all. Conclusions make sense because they are rooted in actual law practice.

Sins of Our Fathers seamlessly blends a ghastly murder mystery with an intriguing romance. Sins of Our Fathers, by A. Rose