The Book Gourmet

Grace Fontaine is dead, tumbled face-first on her coffee table, and Seth Buchanan is determined to find out who did it and why. He suspects the why has a lot to do with the three blue diamonds, the Stars of Mithra, someone is determined to acquire at all cost, it's the "someone" that's elusive...The Grace Fontaine suddenly appears in her house, alive and well, pointing a gun at him, and Seth knows, he just knows, he's in trouble...


I'm sorry to say, this was the weakest of the bunch. Not bad, far from it, in fact, just not as good as the first two stories in the trilogy. Mostly because of the two leads, neither of whom I particularly liked. She was a mystery, playing different parts, wearing different masks depending on the occasion, but I didn't like the mask she wore when she met Buchanan for the second time, and it festered, I think. On the other hand, he was too aloof, too "uptight", and too closed-off for me. There was just something off-putting about his character...And hers for that matter.
Thanks to all this, it was tough buying the romance, despite the fact it was better done that in the previous two books. Better in the sense that the two of them didn't just take it at face value, they tried to put the breaks on, think it through, instead of just accepting it and everything else be damned.
But this aspect of the romance, as much as I liked the pragmatism of it, the suspicion and the doubt, was also the worst of it, because it created unnecessary conflict, and made me dislike both of them even more. I'm fickle, what can I say.

Also, the mystery and suspense that we've been teased with since the start of this trilogy, was too easily resolved, and the slight paranormal angle, instead of smoothing things over, offering a "plausible" explanation, came across as an easy fix, as if wanting to sweep things under the rug and be done with it. Too quick and much too easy.

The rest was top-notch as always, but unfortunately the trilogy didn't end on a bang as it started. Pity.