As she and Bill investigate this odd turn of events, Harry, the local coroner makes yet another disturbing discovery - the clean cut young murdered lawyer has a eerie green map tattooed on his face that only appears under black light and supposedly wasn't their prior to his murder, according to his girlfriend. To make matters worse, not long into the investigation, someone sets off a bomb that destroys a local church and Carly and Bill are convinced the two cases are connected.
The odd appearance of the dead man's injury doesn't look like any weapon they are familiar with and their search takes them to Belmont, the local army research facility. Sure enough, after much digging and cajoling, the pair find out that Belmont is missing a substantial amount of a highly volatile material that definitely could have destroyed the church, but they claim to know nothing of the murder weapon.
Carly's plate was already full prior to the weird murder and the bombing, what with fighting her evil ex-husband Palmer, with whom she sort of shares custody with, although he managed to completely bankrupt her in the legal custody battle. He dumped her last year for a 25-year-old socialite heiress, Evelyn Dutton, which is perfect since he is making a run for political office and he needs the arm candy and the financial war chest she brings. As a result, Carly's kids live in her old house, with Holly, her 12 year old daughter, only able to speak to her at certain times, and her young son having not spoken to her in over a year, for reasons unknown. Despite all of her personal problems, a handsome Colonel named Ben Lejeune at Belmont could make things more interesting in the future.
It's not long before another body drops and, oddly enough, this victim also has a topographical map on his face and is also named Michael and drives a late model Altima, just like the last guy. Huh? Could they be dealing with a serial killer who has a very specific type? Carly doesn't think so, and the more she and Bill pore over the photos of the topo maps that are appearing on the victim's faces, the more they begin to be convinced that something very strange is going on.
Suffice it to say that Carly will have her hands full as she deals not only with her ex, his neurotic new wife, and her kids, but also more explosions, more corpses, and a healthy dose of the mob, because... Chicago.
Shadow Informant was an entertaining read, but there were a few things that were problematic for me. For starters, it was never revealed exactly who stole the volatile material from Belmont. While that's not a big thing, it was just sort of lingering out there. Also, during the course of the story, Carly's daughter, Holly, develops a friendship with Mishkin, someone far advanced in intelligence beyond her 12 year old capacity and she regularly mentions the high level concepts her friend is teaching her, along with Mishkin trying to get her to buy a very expensive laser on her new step-mom's stolen credit card. Carly is a detective and this isn't at all odd to her? My red flags were going wild at the first mention of this mystery friend, personally.
I think my main issue was the fact that it took me a while to read it and normally, I tear through a book in a few sittings, or maybe a few days. This one took me over a week, and it's taken me that long to sit down and write the review as well. I just wasn't compelled to race back to the book and when I'd sit down the next night to read, I had to refresh myself on what happened previously because it just didn't stick in my mind. This is just my personal experience, however. Also, I'm not sure where my mind got it, but I figured out the book's twist right when I started reading it, although it isn't revealed until the last page of the book. Take that with a grain of salt though, as I am slightly book psychic.
Anyway, Shadow Informant is a different sort of murder mystery with a sci-fi twist to it, it just didn't wow me. I guess I was expecting it to go in a certain direction, and it did, just not until the very, very end of the book, so I spent the entire time reading the book anticipating this aspect, and when it was finally revealed, I felt let down that it hadn't been more intertwined so that I could have enjoyed it more throughout the story. It would make more sense if I just spelled it out for you, but that would spoil the story for you, too. You can check out an excerpt on Amazon to see if the book is for you.
