Through the Evil Days - Julia Spencer-Fleming

Rev. Clare Ferguson & Russ VanAlstyne Mystery #8

I ABANDONED THIS BOOK 

audio read by Suzanne Toren

2013 Macmillan Audio

368 pgs.- I only got through a little more than 50

Adult mystery, quit reading on 3/19/2014

Goodreads Rating: 4.09

My Rating: 1/Didn't Like it

TPPL

Setting: Contemporary upstate New York

My comments:  I guess I should have read these in order, but the first books in the series were totally unavailable (or extinct) in audio, so I jumped into #8.  I made it through almost the first two cds.  Too many bigoted church people. Too much talk about church and church-related "stuff."  And one of the most unlikable protagonists I've encountered in a while (Russ). Totally negative, pissed about his new wife's pregnancy, temper easily triggered.  I spent a 35-minute ride without even turning it on - that's when I decided I didn't like it and didn't want to listen to another word. (In 50 pages, the mystery was barely even touched upon!)

Goodreads Review:  On a frigid January night, Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne and Reverend Clare Fergusson are called to the scene of a raging fire, that quickly becomes a double homicide and kidnapping. Which is the very last thing Russ needs...Currently he's struggling with the prospect of impending fatherhood. And his new wife is not at all happy with his proposal for their long-delayed honeymoon: a week in an unelectrified ice-fishing cabin. The vestry of St. Alban's Church has called for the bishop to investigate Clare's "unpriestly" pregnancy. She has one week to find out if she will be scolded, censured, or suspended from her duties. Officer Hadley Knox is having a miserable January as well. Her on-again-off-again lover, Kevin Flynn, has seven days to weigh an offer from the Syracuse Police Department that might take him half a state away.

     As the days and hours tick by, Russ and Clare fight personal and professional battles they've never encountered. In the course of this one tumultuous week the lives of the Millers-Kill residents readers have come to love and cherish change forever. Readers have waited years for Through The Evil Days and Julia Spencer-Fleming delivers with the exquisite skill and craftsmanship that have made her such a success.