I am a big fan of L. R. Wright whose mysteries set on the Sunshine Coast of B.C. have an indefinable charm. In this book, Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg marries his long time love, Cassandra Mitchell. The day of the marriage a young girl goes missing and 6 months later her body is discovered. All the time we know who the guilty party is and we even know the motivation. The mystery is how will the RCMP discover the murderer.

This book introduces Edwina Henderson who stars in several later books. ( )

This is the first book that I have read by Laurali R. Wright, and I had no idea, as I was reading, that ACTS OF MURDER was in fact the last in a quite long series.

The Suspect (1985)
Sleep While I Sing (1986)
A Chill Rain in January (1990)
Fall From Grace (1991)
Prized Possessions (1993)
A Touch of Panic (1994)
Mother Love (1995)
Strangers Among Us (1996)
Acts of Murder (1997)

Mrs O'Hara's epiphany takes place in 1985. After her fall down the stairs she becomes convinced she will die near her 65th birthday - most of her immediate family have - and she sets herself the task of sweeping the world clean of people who have done injury to others. Just how many she swept aside and how she did it I will leave you to find out from the novel. The amazing thing is that no-one saw the connection between the murders for nearly ten years, until a teenager and a young woman are discovered to be in adjacent graves, and killed by the same methods. Some of the murders go entirely undetected.

For a while I wasn't sure whether there was one murderer at work or two.

Karl Alberg, local police chief, has a sort of an epiphany too, as he realises there may be something he can do outside the RCMP.

Until I got into the heart of ACTS OF MURDER I felt as if I was doing mental gymnastics as we jumped backwards and forwards between time frames. In the long run it was a satisfying read, and everything came together nicely, but for a while I had my doubts that it would. I'm not sure, having read the last in the series, whether I will go back and read any of the others, although L.R. Wright won the Edgar for Best First Novel for THE SUSPECT in 1986.

In a sense the series does continue with two Edwina Henderson novels.

Kidnap (2000)
Menace (2001) ( )

#9 in the series (1997). "RCMP Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg is on a collision course with change. Hard on the heels of his marriage to Cassandra Mitchell comes news of her considerable - and quite unexpected - inheritance. And Alberg is in for another surprise, when Sergeant Eddie Henderson arrives for HER new post.
Alberg is also on a collision course with a quiet killer stalking Sechelt. Someone who watches, judges, and deals punishment for the sins of this sleepy BC town's inhabitants. So subtle are the murders, so obscure the motive, no one in Sechelt suspects the deaths are connected...
Introduces the interesting Edwina Henderson, and maintains the usual Wright tension, psychological twists, and sympathy for the police." - Seal jacket notes.
Excellent as ever: a very tense crime story, with very interesting and likeable police characters. A superb series keeps on getting better. ( )