Wednesday 18 January 2017

Book ~ "In Winter's Grip" (2010) Brenda Chapman

From Goodreads ~ After her mothers suicide, Maja Cleary turned her back on her family and Duved Cove, Minnesota, until a desperate phone call reveals that her father has been murdered and her brother Jonas is the prime suspect. She flies home, knowing that she will have to confront shared memories of an abusive father. 

Even as she works to prove her brothers innocence, she cannot ignore the evidence that he had every reason to kill their father. The frigid, stormy Minnesota landscape sets the mood as she battles against time, the local police and the relentless snow. 

Maja is a plastic surgeon married to a businessman and living in Ottawa.  Though she keeps in touch with her brother, Jonas, she hasn't spoken to her father in years.  Their father wasn't a nice man when they were growing up, which led their mother to commit suicide when Maja was in university twenty years ago.  She heads home to Minnesota when she hears that her father has been murdered.

Wanting to protect Jonas, Maja starts asking around the town they are in trying to find out who had a reason to kill her father.  Though he was outwardly friendly and nice to others, not many knew the true nature of their father.  But she discovers that there are some who did have a reason to kill him and she wants to figure out who is the killer.

I've read a few books by this author and I like her writing style.  I though this one was okay.  I found the storyline interesting ... there were lots of people who could have killed the father with good reason.  It is written in first person perspective in Maja's voice.  As a head's up, there is swearing.

Damaged from their childhoods, Maja and Jonas are not the most open people.   Maja is in a so-so marriage but not willing to do anything about it.  She is still dreaming about her high school boyfriend, Billy, from more than twenty years ago, who she meets up with again when she goes home (I found this storyline a bit distracting).  Jonas is married to Claire and they have a young teenage son and there is a lot of tension in their house for some reason.  Tobias, the police officer, assigned to solve the murder seems more interested in flirting with Maja than was professional since he knew she was married.

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