Try Dying

On a wet Tuesday morning in December, Ernesto Bonilla, twenty-eight, shot his twenty-three-year-old wife, Alejandra, in the backyard of their West 45th Street home in South Los Angeles. As Alejandra lay bleeding to death, Ernesto drove their Ford Explorer to the westbound Century Freeway connector where it crossed over the Harbor Freeway and pulled to a stop on the shoulder.

Bonilla stepped around the back of the SUV, ignoring the rain and the afternoon drivers on their way to LAX and the west side, placed the barrel of his .38 caliber pistol into his mouth, and fired.

His body fell over the shoulder and plunged one hundred feet, hitting the roof of a Toyota Camry heading northbound on the harbor Freeway. The impact crushed the roof of the Camry. The driver, Jacqueline Dwyer, twenty-seven, an elementary schoolteacher from Reseda, died at the scene.

But, what exactly does she die from? The impact... crushed roof... something else?
Oh what a tangled weave this enjoyable book is.

Ty Buchanan reminds me a little of sarcastic Micky Spillane and the snappy one-liners of Cary Grant in "His Girl Friday"... only this is a modern day mystery with cell phones and and a computer savvy nun. Oh, and Jacqueline was the fiancee of Ty, so he has a deep interest in finding out exactly what happened to Jacqueline.

Here is another good book that is slated Christian Fiction, but is not at all Christian Fiction. It flirts with it, but never gets serious. The protagonist realizes that his lovely wife to be was a Christian, and as the story unfolds, we see that she had some reservations about marrying someone who was not a Christian. That isn't discussed, though because it's all from the eyes of the protag. However, at the end of the book his rage magically turns into forgiveness with no explanation.

While it was enjoyable, and it is worth the money, it fell flat after this guy goes through hell on earth without ever finding what he was looking for. It had a great build up, but doesn't deliver a satisfactory explanation for the change of heart. Because of that, I can only give this book 2 stars.