The Mortician's Daughter by Elizabeth Bloom
North Adams Author Returns to the Scene of the Crime
By: Leanne R. Jewett - Oct 17, 2006
The Mortician's Daughter
By Elizabeth Bloom
Publisher: Warner Books
Date published: 09/28/2006
ISBN: 0759568030
Elizabeth Bloom's new fast paced maze of a mystery "The Morticiann's Daughter" is set in North Adams though the town is never actually named in the book. Ginny Lavoie, a former hometown girl turned New York City cop, returns after a twenty-year absence to find the murderer of the son of her closest childhood friend.
The murder scene was in the yet-to-be renovated Eclipse Mill and the action takes place in and around the town at such familiar locations as Molly's bakery, the Fish Pond (Windsor Lake) and the newly restored public library.
Away from the noise and distraction of her troubled life in the city, Ginny finds herself not only surrounded by people and places of a former life but with the time to contemplate that past and the choices she made. Estranged from her father, she had fled small town expectations for the anonymity and promise of the city, leaving behind the comfort of the familiar, the love of her closest friend and a high school sweetheart.
The town is still populated with many of the same characters from when she was a girl, but now a new element has been added. A world-class art museum has moved into the deserted factory buildings of the former Sprague Electric on the western edge of town. It has attracted artists and city people whose urban lifestyles and mores frequently clash with the long established order of the local population.
Ginny, who has walked in both of these worlds, for twenty years, fought a battle within herself between the old and the new, the urban and the small town, and, in this unconventional visit home, finally comes to some understanding that these worlds do not have to be mutually exclusive.
The novel offers a satisfying array of clues and plausible red herrings as more murders take place and Ginny finds herself in jeopardy. The characters are distinct and convincing and the romantic subplot is colorful and unpredictable. The plot is sometimes advanced through unconvincing blunders in routine police procedure and obvious mistakes made by this otherwise savvy detective, but these lapses are only a minor distraction from an otherwise entertaining novel.
The Mortitician's Daughter is a good read, by a native of North Adams, which is filled with easily recognized local haunts and sure to forever enliven your perception of Molly's Bakery and their distinctive rolled cinnamon bread.