Shadow Ridge by M. E. Browning

If you like police procedurals, here’s a new series for you! M. E. Browning, author of the Agatha-nominated Mer Cavallo mysteries, introduces us to Jo Wyatt, detective in a small college town in Colorado. Shadow Ridge is the first book and I predict that it won’t be the last we’ll see of Jo Wyatt!

Shadow Ridge by M. E. Browning

Genre: Police Procedural

Publication: 6 October 2020, Crooked Lane Books

Death is one click away when a string of murders rocks a small Colorado town in the first mesmerizing novel in M. E. Browning’s A Jo Wyatt Mystery series.

Echo Valley, Colorado, is a place where the natural beauty of a stunning river valley meets a budding hipster urbanity. But when an internet stalker is revealed to be a cold-blooded killer in real life the peaceful community is rocked to its core.

It should have been an open-and-shut case: the suicide of Tye Horton, the designer of a cutting-edge video game. But Detective Jo Wyatt is immediately suspicious of Quinn Kirkwood, who reported the death. When Quinn reveals an internet stalker is terrorizing her, Jo is skeptical. Doubts aside, she delves into the claim and uncovers a link that ties Quinn to a small group of beta-testers who had worked with Horton. When a second member of the group dies in a car accident, Jo’s investigation leads her to the father of a young man who had killed himself a year earlier. But there’s more to this case than a suicide, and as Jo unearths the layers, a more sinister pattern begins to emerge–one driven by desperation, shame, and a single-minded drive for revenge.

As Jo closes in, she edges ever closer to the shattering truth–and a deadly showdown that will put her to the ultimate test. (Goodreads blurb)

My thoughts

This book has everything you could possibly want in a police procedural mystery. Appealing, life-like characters. Snappy dialogue. A plot as twisty as the icy Rocky Mountain roads, and as dangerous, too: one slip, one wrong turn, and you might find yourself tumbling over a sheer cliff, plummeting toward death . . .

That’s a bit of an exaggeration. You won’t die from reading this book. But you’ll feel the increasing danger and wonder whether the characters will survive to the last page.

I’ll be honest. It took me a while to warm to Detective Jo Wyatt and for a while, I was afraid this would put me off the entire book.

For the first few chapters, I found her initial suspicious and (at points) hostile attitude toward Quinn off-putting. She’s a detective doing a difficult job amid her own heartbreak and disappointments. I sympathized with that. At the same time, it was hard for me, someone outside the police force, to understand why her first reaction to everyone is suspicion.

But by half-way through the book, I grew to like her. I understood that she is policing in Echo Valley, her hometown. That comes with advantages–she’s familiar with the people–and major disadvantages–she’s expected to ignore certain crimes because of the perpetrator’s identity. Once that clicked into place for me, so did Jo’s character.

All the characters are complicated people. Even the minor characters, such as Jo’s father, are developed. Browning has the ability to craft uncannily-life-like characters who drive the story with a building momentum. This gives Shadow Ridge an energy that is sometimes missing in more paint-by-numbers procedurals.

I read somewhere that M. E. Browning was in law enforcement. If so, she makes great use of her own background. There are some tantalizing details about cop habits and behavior. The book feels like the author knows how homicide investigations work, and has dealt with the frustrations and fears, unknowns and unknowable aspects of any unnatural death. It struck me that Browning isn’t only concerned with the detective catching the bad guys, as is standard for police procedurals. She’s also concerned with the societal responsibility of a cop to see people as people.

I believe this is the first in a series. With such rich, deep characters and an intriguing setting, there’s plenty of material for future stories. I enjoyed Shadow Ridge a great deal and recommend it for all police procedural and mystery lovers.

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review. All opinions are my own.

Like this? Read that!

If you enjoy police procedurals, try Road to Mercy by T. J. Brearton, which features a female FBI agent and other well-developed characters and an energetic plot.