The blurb for this book really caught my eye - " Bullets and blackmail and beaches...a hit man and a hurricane and a high-stakes political campaign ...And Night Falls ramps up the action and suspense when Pensacola native Shelley Goodnight finds the body of a murder victim...but not just any victim. Dead man Farrell Gilbert worked at the desk next to Shelley's in her father's real estate office...an inconvenient fact the authorities can't ignore.
Add a hitman, Hurricane Ivan, and conscientious Deputy Clay Cameron from Santa Rosa County to the mix, and the tension tightens like a corkscrew."
Shelley is a spoilt daddy's girl who moved back in with her parents after her divorce and treats work at her father's real estate office as more of a hobby than a job. She has decided to be independent (but not that independent that she gets a job elsewhere) and moves into her own place. Her life is pretty sweet, but on a camping trip with her buddies she discovers the body of her colleague. Her father is already suspected of wrong-doing by the authorities and the massive coincidence makes Shelley a target of their investigations too. With plenty of people around her double-dealing she soon finds her life in danger for what she might know. Her new relationship with Deputy Cameron gives her an ally and someone to help her run for her life.
Now the plot of the book is pretty good, and had a nice mix of blackmail, politics, corruption, old family vendettas and danger. I would also say that I quite liked the author's narrative style, and the balance of description and action was pretty good. However for me the book just didn't work that well. Firstly I couldn't warm to Shelley, she was just too spoilt, selfish and childish, and frankly a bit dense. She has been toting round a couple of letters that she didn't recognise, the names on them were a pretty obvious clue but meant nothing to her until someone pointed them out at the end. Her developing relationship with Clay was too syrupy for my taste too, and in places overpowered the main story. I also felt that at the end I knew who had done what, but in some cases I couldn't quite figure out why, or exactly what influence others had been exerting over them. It felt like it was meant to all be tied up nicely but bits of the puzzle seemed to be missing, although in fairness it is possible I didn't pick up clues as to how it all fitted. Although it is largely typo free there were a few instances where the main character's name was spelt wrongly.
I also had a problem with the format of the book. I was given a copy by the author via Smashwords. As there is no specific Kindle friendly format available on that site, I downloaded the PDF which was so small I found it difficult to read. If you are going to buy this book for kindle I would seriously recommend getting it from Amazon so you can change the text size if it isn't suitable for your eyes.
Format: PDF for Kindle, review copy
My Rating: 2*
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