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Book Review of Fatal Error: A Novel

Fatal Error: A Novel
kuligowskiandrewt avatar reviewed on + 569 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1


It's been 2 ½ years since I'd read a book in J.A. Jance's Alison Reynolds.series. Now that I've finished Fatal Error, the 6th in the series, I am asking myself What TOOK you so long to come back?

Like most of Jance's novels, Fatal Error is A Novel of Suspense. Sometimes that means there is a murder mystery associated with it, and other times like this one it's more of a here's the scheme, now how (if?) our protagonists discover what happened before it's too late? Before Person(s) X gets killed / before the crime occurs / before the culprits get away / etc. That's fine after all, Peter Falk and his team turned that kind of crime story into an art form with the long-running Columbo series. As long as it's done well which, when the name Jance is on the cover, you automatically assume it will be!

The Alison Reynolds series, including Fatal Error, features likeable characters not flawless, but likeable. It features a beautiful setting Sedona, Arizona (although the majority of this novel takes place in various California settings come to think of it, a lot of the tales in this series find an excuse to wander across the state line. (Ms. Jance, are you justifying a tax write-off for your wandering, by any chance? ). Fatal Error also features intertwining plots an alcoholic middle-aged ex-anchorwoman (a thinly veiled funhouse-mirror image of our hero), a serial online-dater, and a May/December couple dealing with a bankrupt company who worked on drones for the U.S. Government. (I'll let the reader watch how / if these actually do wind together.)

It will NOT be a whole 30 months before I read the next in this series!

RATING: A solid 4 stars.