Richard Montanari

Master of terrifying crime novels Richard Montanari, author of The Rosary Girls, returns with a standalone small-town thriller to make the hairs stand on the back of your neck.

A Novel of Suspense

The Buried Girl

Denaiir

Pretty good standalone thriller, the killer's identity is known pretty early in the book so to the reader it's not a mystery, but the interesting part is how do all the storylines connect. 
It had enticing elements such as crimes happening every 25 years, religious symbols such as 7 vices and 7 virtues. It also had a great small-town atmosphere and engaging characters, my favorite being Ivy, the detective.

Narah Quinn

(SPOILERS)
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3.5/5 (rounded down for goodreads) 

I really like Richard Montanari as a rule, especially his Byrne and Balzano series, and I was surprised to find this stand alone on the shelf in the library as I had no idea he had another one out.
 
I enjoyed this, and I liked the way it all linked back, but it felt like it took a real long time to get going, with about 50 pages at the beginning leading to the death of our main characters wife, which would be fine (and does have a point down the line) but we know she dies from the blurb – it is a lot of reading, with a lot of day to day that almost seems like its padding for the sake of it. 
Most of the real action (if you like) happened in the last 70 or so pages, up to then it was lot of piecing together. Really slowly. 

I didn’t mind this, but it did seem like it too a really long time to get anywhere, and the whole thing, while wonderfully looped back to make a neat bow, essentially hinged on 3 or more generations of crazy people with zero reasoning as to why. 
The art was important, I get that, but why did they inspire crazy, life long behaviours, and why, even though I grasp that being raised a certain way may cause a total belief in something, this seemed really far fetched. 

The ties that bound everything really were intricate, and not immediately obvious, but I was left a tad frustrated that Ivy never got answers, that we never find out who Billy was (I mean we know Jakob was nuts but Detta? I don’t believe that) or if he was the same as the Boy that Jakob was with. 

I don’t really DNF books, I feel like the work that goes into it really does deserve to be honoured once you start it (though in the case of the truly awful, put the book down!) but this could seriously have been about 100-150 pages shorter and would have probably been a better read. It would have made it more fluid, faster paced, and you would have still gotten all the essential details. 
As such, for me, it was a little disappointing as a result.

The Buried Girl A Novel of Suspense

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