My perspective on this novel is probably skewed by reading it after the rich mysteries by Stieg Larsson. Kava's book pales by comparison.Character development seemed jagged to me, with some characters occasionally inserted for no obvious reason. For example, why did the psychiatrist even need to be at the hospital (near the end)?My biggest beef with this story is that only half of the mystery was resolved. That's just a poor prank to get us to read the next one, in my opinion. Kava could take a lesson from Larsson, who also wrote a series but with each novel strong enough to stand alone. I have not read the other Maggie O'Dell books in this series, but this one looked interesting. Maggie is a tortured soul but swept all her emotions under the rug (like a man would do) and we didn't get into her head as I usually do with the characters I read (because it was written by a man?). Was reading it at lunchtime so the descriptions of what happens to a body when it is on fire was a bit overdone. Overall, found it well written with lots of action, but I probly will not read the other books in this series.
