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SHUNNING SARAH
by Julie Kramer
Atria, August 2012
336 pages
$23.99
ISBN: 145166463X


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

In each of Kramer's five mysteries featuring television news reporter Riley Spartz, the author gives readers the primary story involving a crime and a secondary story - one with more of a human interest twist. In SHUNNING SARAH, Riley takes readers into an Amish community to investigate a young woman's death while bringing us along as she follows a conflict between bear hunters and scientists studying bears' movements and hibernation.

Riley Spartz is always looking for her next big story, but since the arrival of Bryce Griffin as news director, Riley's efforts to find a suitable story grow harder by the day. At the leading station in the Twin Cities area, her job at Channel 3 had been to go for the scoop - the story that would bring in big overnight ratings and keep the audience coming back to for the follow-ups. But with Bryce's arrival, the big story is being replaced by the cheap story. So when Riley's parents call her with a tip about a child stuck in a sink hole, all of her news instincts say "this is it, this is the big story," while her boss is lukewarm at best. Bryce finally relents and Riley and her cameraman Malik head for the scene only to find the boy already safely rescued. Not wanting to return to the station empty-handed, they attempt to get an interview with the mother and a picture of the boy, but the mother reacts in horror. And then they find out why. When the boy slid into the sink hole, he landed next to a dead woman. Riley decides to investigate who the woman was and how she ended up in the sink hole. Riley's investigation leads her straight into the heart of an Amish community. What she finds there is disturbing.

What makes Kramer's books so very enjoyable is her attention to detail. In the plotting of SHUNNING SARAH, Kramer has done her homework on the Amish and gives readers the darker side of some of the Amish ways. The bear storyline is interesting enough to send more than a few readers to do a Google search. Through Riley's conflicts with the news director, readers are given an interesting look behind the scene of television news productions. A good bit of this would be funny (and it still is to some degree) if it was not that most readers will recognize Bryce's cost-saving measures also present in their own television news. Still, the description of Riley's efforts at "one man banding" is bound to cause readers to chuckle.

This is the fifth book in the series, but aside from some personal drama, most of the needed back story is given in the context of this book, so readers could easily start with SHUNNING SARAH.

§ Caryn St.Clair resides in University City, Missouri and is a former elementary school media specialist, President of the Parks Commission and a docent at the St.Louis Zoo.

Reviewed by Caryn St Clair, July 2012

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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