Here's another middle book in a trilogy. I end up with a lot of books from Baker Publishing Group, who publish as both Revell and Bethany House, all of them seem to be part of trilogies and it's an anomalous book indeed that actually begins one of them. Oddly, though, while I rarely begin any of these trilogies, it never seems to matter. Most of them are standalone books, merely with the occasional broader story arc that spans the series of three.

This one is no different. The series is about River Ryland and Tony St. Clair, who both used to work for the FBI in their Behavioral Analysis Unit, but retired after a traumatic incident that I presume happened before the trilogy began. They've moved to St. Louis, Missouri and started up a private detective agency. I'm not sure if book one, 'Cold Pursuit', had them take on a serial killer, the Salt River Strangler, or whether that was also before the series began, but it's both in the past at this point and a current concern, because while Joseph Baker has been caught, convicted and locked up, he apparently has some sort of protégé or copycat who wants to kill River. That isn't the focus of this book, but the ongoing danger helps flavour it.

The focus this time out is a new cold case, something they apparently specialise in; but they can't officially work it, which is an unusual touch that I appreciated. A serial killer burned down a house twenty-four years ago in Des Moines, Iowa, with two people inside. We see some of this from the perspective of the killer, who seems to be female conducting her first kill to impress her mentor, who seems to be male. She made a mistake, because a policeman on the scene sees a little girl in the house and heroically rescues her. She wasn't supposed to be there, but she lives. The cop who performed this heroic act is Ray St. Clair, Tony's dad.

Almost a quarter of a century on, Ray is preparing to retire, but this case bugs him. The cops in Des Moines caught the killer, Arlen Thacker, and locked him away long ago, but Ray never bought into him being the Snowman. It's beyond doubt that he committed one similar murder, so there wasn't any concern about him being locked up, but Ray doesn't believe he committed the other two. Now, he also believes that he's back and has followed him up the road to Burlington, Iowa, where he has returned to his killing ways, with two further victims.

The bright move that he makes here is to invite his son and Tony's new partner to prepare a profile for him, so that he can investigate more efficiently and maybe finally reach a resolution over this closed case that satisfies him. River and Tony are happy to help, even though they're only licensed in Missouri and so can't be any part of an official police investigation in Iowa. And, after reviewing Ray's evidence, they concur with his conclusions and get to work.

That's the basic synopsis and the mystery is a surprisingly effective one, given that we don't take part in much actual investigation, except through updates that Ray provides, and there isn't a list of suspects. Really, we only see one viable suspect at any point throughout the book, so mystery is perhaps not the best word to use, but we don't necessarily realise that. I figured out the identity of the Snowman before Nancy Mehl revealed it; but not by a long way because she'd distracted me capably with story while trying to figure it out myself. I was still waiting for River and Tony to find the solution when the light bulb went off.

What I need to add here is that, while this sounds like a rather unusual police procedural, it's not really a crime novel in that sense. It's listed as suspense, which is fair, because that speaks closer to what actually happens. While Mehl does give clues, we're never really trying to solve this from our armchairs, we're generally happy to sit back and let River and Tony do that, always with quite the sense of danger surrounding them. The Salt River Strangler's protégé is still out there, which worries River, who is already suffering from PTSD-driven nightmares, and now the Snowman may want a shot at her too.

What "suspense" doesn't tell us is that this is overtly a Christian book. I've found the many books I've read from Revell, one of Baker Publishing's imprints, to be fascinating because they all have a Christian element to them, but it tends to be a tiny one, almost a contractual obligation, as if the publisher won't publish unless there's one scene that features prayer. Now, those stories unfold in what seems to be known as a "clean" way, meaning that the romance never leads to sex and there isn't any swearing, but they rarely seem to get preachy. This does, because much of the point has to do with God and the characters' relationships with him. Tony's sister tends to read inspirational suspense novels and clearly that's what this is.

As that started to be obvious, I had sinking feelings because those Revell books often work rather nicely until the prayer scene shows up and it becomes problematic in a minor way. Having a whole focus on that didn't seem promising, but Mehl handles it cleverly.

For one, while she's clearly the sort of author who wants to treat her writing as a missionary tool to bring people to faith, she also acknowledges the damage that religion can do. She certainly has no hesitation in putting religious leaders in a poor light. River seems to have found God recently—and this tends to focus explicitly on God rather than Jesus—but her father was a pastor. He was an adulterer and an ineffective father who preached with a hellfire and brimstone approach that she didn't understand or appreciate as a child. She was raised around a "judgmental religious spirit" and it put her off big time. Also, Ray and his wife Beth had a bad pastor too, one who told him that he shouldn't work in law enforcement as a practicing Christian, as if there was some sort of clash.

Of course, River and Tony have a wonderful pastor now and so do Ray and Beth, so this is always on the side of Christianity, even if Mehl acknowledges that not every pastor does their job well. What this translates to is Christian themes forming a huge part of this story. Sure, this is about a search for a serial killer, but it's just as much about guilt, humility and forgiveness, which are each major conundrums for River to figure out as a relatively new Christian, with a little help from Tony here and there. There's a lot here about Old Testament vengeance wrapped up in the Snowman's story too, and I have to say that I found all of these angles interesting. They aren't necessarily what I'm looking for in a serial killer story, but it was fascinating to see how Mehl wove them in.

I was less enthused by the overriding focus on letting go as a form of therapy, by trusting in God to handle our problems for us. It's never outright stated, but there's a strong suggestion that, while River's the one going through this process, not letting God take over will lead to the behaviour of the Snowman. He wasn't born evil, he was made into what he became by circumstances beyond his control, the evil actions of others prompting him into an extreme response. However, had he done what River struggles to do throughout, to let God take all that pain and torment and just handle it for him, then maybe he wouldn't have turned to murder and arson.

And this angle didn't work for me in the slightest. It removes will and responsibility and it lessens what good people do, say in a police investigation to catch a serial killer, because it's not them anymore, it's God working through them and that's just a copout in a book like this. If God can handle serial killer cases, then why didn't he do that twenty-four years ago? I'm not reading suspense so God can solve crimes. I want people to do that and to use their talent, experience and ingenuity to do so. Sure, an author can believe that they were God-given attributes or not, but let them do the job they're paid to do.

I see that this was published by Bethany House rather than Revell, so maybe this more overt take on Christianity is more of a focus for them. However, the Jaime Jo Wright gothics I've enjoyed in recent months are also Bethany House and they don't have any of that, so who knows. Maybe I'm learning that I'm far more likely to enjoy the genre of romantic suspense than its apparent sister, inspirational suspense. I guess that's my lesson for the day. ~~ Hal C F Astell