Rating: 2 stars
Herbalist Mary Jane Hendrickson was raped, tortured, murdered, hung from a tree and set ablaze in the name of being a witch. More than 100 years later it is said that Mary Jane haunts her grave causing strange things to happen.When a young girl is found brutally murdered at the grave site all signs point to the ghost of Mary Jane, however Sgt. Cee Cee Gallagher knows these killings are being committed by someone very much alive.
As Cee Cee dives into the past in order to get a handle on the present, she finds out that a similar murder took place 20 years before, which was never made public; she also finds that the town has been a hiding a very deep dark secret all these years.
The second in the Cee Cee Gallagher series, Mary Jane's Grave, finds newly promoted Sgt. Cee Cee Gallagher divorced from her husband Eric and engaged to FBI heartthrob, Michael Hagerman. Stacy Dittrich is still writing Cee Cee as her mini-me, and it gets a little annoying. Cee Cee tells the reader about her attractive blonde looks and her “piercing green eyes” and the characters constantly admire her beauty. At one point, Michael’s ex-wife gets into an argument with Cee Cee and then says to Michael, “how did you think I would feel, she used to be a model for Christ’s sake.” Not to mention that Cee Cee is constantly recognized as “that cop on TV.” My eyes started to hurt from all the rolling they did. The whole thing seems very self-indulgent.
As previously hoped, Dittrich’s writing still hasn’t loosened up. The author continues to spoon feed information to the reader, at times the plot read like a new detective handbook. Cee Cee had to qualify everything she did in the course of the investigation and interview. If she asked a suspect where they were last night, the qualifier would follow “I had to ask this question for several reasons”… then she’d actually list the reasons. Has Stacy Dittrich not figured out who her demographic is? The people reading these books watch every crime show on TV; they’re smart, they’re savvy and they’ve got the crime solved before Cee Cee can finish admiring herself in the mirror.
The story itself began sounding like an episode of Scooby Doo; seriously, murder in the haunted cemetery, complete with eerie sounds, an old lady in a white dress that keeps disappearing and car radios turning on for no reason. When Cee Cee finally solves the crime, you almost expect her to unmask old Mister Wilkins the inn-keeper, who of course would’ve been successful had it not been for that meddling detective.
At the end of Mary Jane’s Grave is a sneak peak at the next “Cee Cee Gallagher Thriller” called The Body Mafia. I have my thoughts, but Scooby said it best “Rut row, Raggy!”
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Mass Market Paperback: 302 pages
Publisher: Leisure Books (April 28, 2009)
ISBN-13: 978-0843961607