LILY WHITE IN DETROIT by Cynthia Harrison @CynthiaHarriso1 #RBRT

4 out of 5 stars

On Amazon UK
On Amazon.com
On Goodreads

How I discovered this book: it was submitted to Rosie's Book Review Team, of which I am a member.

Genre: Crime, Psychological

Lily White is a PI in Detroit who usually concentrates on insurance scams and missing persons.  When she is asked to investigate the activities of Jimmy Heyl's wife, she finds herself involved in much more than she bargained for, and events become complicated when her personal and professional lives become intertwined.

The novel is written in alternating POVs: Lily in the 1st person, and Detective Paxton in the third.  From the beginning of the story, we discover that there is more to Lily than meets the eye, and the mystery surrounding her is drip-fed slowly, which I liked.  The theme of PTSD is examined throughout the novel, with regard to both Lily and the ex-partner of Paxton.  It is clear that the author has done her research into not only the psychological effects but also the physiological, and the effect is quite an eye-opener for a reader such as me; I knew very little about it.  The factual side of the novel is convincing throughout, and I liked the picture of the Detroit of the 21st century.

I do warm to an emotionally damaged loner in novels, and though this character type is one to be found often in detective stories both in literature and on-screen, Lily was in no way a stereotype.  The author's background in romance novel writing was evident in that I could see exactly where a certain relationship was heading from the very beginning (you know how in romance novels the reader knows before the characters do!), but this element did not seem out of place, for this is a psychological drama as well as a crime story.

There were some events that I thought deserved to be shown in an actual scene via flashback, or at the time, rather than the details being related to one character from another in dialogue, which would have made for more impact and suspense, but on the whole it's a cleverly put together book, and I'd recommend it for anyone who enjoys unravelling murder clues, or has particular interest in PTSD.