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    Among the Departed
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    Among the Departed
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    Among the Departed
    Ebook332 pages5 hours

    Among the Departed

    By Vicki Delany

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    2019 recipient of the Derrick Murdoch award from the Crime Writers of Canada

    Fifteen years ago a young girl named Moonlight Smith went to her best friend Nicky Nowak's house for a sleepover. Moonlight joined the family for breakfast the following morning and was then picked up by her mother. Shortly after, Mr. Nowak went for a walk. He was never seen again.

    Autumn has arrived on the mountains above Trafalgar, B.C. and Constable Molly "Moonlight" Smith is cuddled by the fireplace with Adam Tocek of the RCMP when Tocek and his dog Norman are called to a wilderness camping ground to join the search for a little boy who sneaked away from his family looking for bears. The child is found, dirty, terrified, weeping, but unharmed. Then the inquisitive Norman digs up something else: human bones.

    The ID isn't positive, but it is enough to have Sergeant John Winters of the Trafalgar City Police re-open the Brian Nowak investigation. He finds a family shattered beyond recognition. Mrs. Nowak is an empty shell of a woman, dressed in pajamas, never leaving the house. Her son Kyle haunts the streets of Trafalgar at night and spends his days creating beautiful, but highly troubling, art. Nicky Nowak lives in Vancouver and has grown up to be gorgeous, charming, and elegant. Yet behind that façade lies a woman whose heart has closed so tightly against human relationships that she comes to Trafalgar trailing in her wake a terrifying threat to another innocent family....

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSourcebooks
    Release dateApr 1, 2011
    ISBN9781615952687
    Unavailable
    Among the Departed
    Author

    Vicki Delany

    Vicki Delany is one of Canada’s most prolific and varied crime writers and a national bestseller in the United States. She has written more than 30 books: from clever cozies to Gothic thrillers, gritty police procedurals to historical fiction and seven novellas in the Rapid Reads line. She writes the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop series, the Year Round Christmas mysteries and under the pen name of Eva Gates, the Lighthouse Library series. Vicki is the past president of Crime Writers of Canada. Her work has been nominated for the Derringer, Bony Blithe, Golden Oak, and Arthur Ellis Awards. She lives in Prince Edward County, Ontario.

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    Reviews for Among the Departed

    4/5

    41 ratings8 reviews

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    • 3/5
      When Constable Molly Smith accompanies her Mountie boyfriend on a search for a missing child, they find something unexpected: parts of a human skeleton. Are these the remains of a man missing for 15 years, who was presumed by all to have deserted his wife and children? As Molly and her partner dig into the cold case, they have to determine, not only the skeleton's identity, but also if the death was natural, accidental, suicide, or murder. As an added twist, Molly and the missing man's daughter were childhood friends, and then-13-year-old Molly was one of the last people to see him before he disappeared.I like the blend of cozy and police procedural elements in this book, and it will appeal to many fans of both genres. While the investigation is a bit slow to develop, its pace seems suited to the nature of an investigation that requires reading lots of reports, interviewing and re-interviewing witnesses, and looking for inconsistencies among them.I spotted a couple of errors that were significant enough to distract me from the story and send my mind off on tangents. In order to identify the remains, the investigators were going to match mitochondrial DNA from the bones with the missing man's son's DNA. However, mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to child, so it's unlikely that the son's mitochondrial DNA would match his father's. Genealogy is a popular hobby, and readers familiar with the genealogical uses of DNA will spot this error. Also, Molly encounters a woman with memory problems late one night. She recognizes the woman, and takes her to the home she shares with her daughter's family. The woman's age is given as 89, and her daughter is described as “young” and has four children under the age of 5. It would be more believable if the younger woman was her granddaughter rather than her daughter.It was fun to spot a character in the book reading a historical Klondike mystery, since I've read and enjoyed the first book in the author's mystery series set in Yukon Territory during the late 19th century gold rush. Since I'm a historical mystery fan, I think the Klondike books will always be my favorite by this author. However, I'll want to read more books in this series, too.This review is based on an advanced e-galley provided by the publisher through NetGalley.
    • 4/5
      Among the Departed by Vicki Delany is a solidly written Canadian mystery. It is a part of the Constable Molly Smith Mystery series that follows the life of Moonlight “Molly” Smith, who is a Constable in Trafalgar, British Columbia. Molly is the product of two hippie parents that are very liberal in their beliefs and do not like law enforcement. In Among the Departed, Molly and her boyfriend, Adam Tocek who is a RCMP officer, stumble upon some bones in the mountains while rescuing a young boy who left the safety of his campsite and family to try to see some bears. But were these human bones? Unfortunately the answer was yes, and it was soon found out that they were the bones of a man that was missing for the last fifteen years. However, will the family be able to find closure in his disappearance and find out what really happened?This book is supposed to be about the mystery of the man’s bones that were found, however, there are a lot of side stories that are also happening throughout the book that will draw you in and wanting more. For example, the ironic relationship that develops between Molly’s mother and her boss, the Chief Constable. The side stories actually help to move the story along and do not detract that much from the main plot of the story and are all wrapped up nicely in the end, so you are not left wondering what happened to the side characters and their happenings.If you are a fan of mystery novels, I would suggest this book. You will not get anything really that you haven’t read in other mystery novels, but that shouldn’t dissuade you from reading this beautifully written book. Before reading Among the Departed, I would suggest reading the other Constable Molly Smith mysteries to understand the characters better, because in this novel itself, you do not get a whole lot of character development.
    • 5/5
      This is book five in the Constable Molly Smith series by Vicki Delany. However, this is the first one that I have read. I don’t feel that I was lost or left out because I hadn’t read the first books. This can definitely be read as a stand alone book. I will be going back and reading the prior books because I enjoyed this one so much.Vicki Delany’s characters are vibrant and alive. I could just picture Jamie defiantly stuffing his blanket in his sleeping bag and setting off on an adventure at the start of the story. And the imagery just kept getting better from there on out. I felt like I had a little movie playing in my head as I read this book.The fact that this mystery was so close and personal to Molly’s just made it that much more emotional. When Molly was young, she went by her given name of Moonlight Smith. She and her best friend, Nicky, were always spending time at each other’s houses. In fact, Moonlight spent the night at Nicky’s house the night before Nicky’s father disappeared.Now many years later, the case is reopened when his bones are found. I found this book difficult to put down. In conjunction with the Wakela's World Disclosure Statement, I received a product in order to enable my review. No other compensation has been received. My statements are an honest account of my experience with the brand. The opinions stated here are mine alone.
    • 4/5
      Old bones uncovered in the forest outside Trafalgar, British Columbia, may be the solution to a 15-year-old missing persons case.Emotionally calmer than the last several Molly Smith mysteries.
    • 4/5
      Molly Smith and her boyfriend Adam Tocek are both constables in the town of Trafalgar, British Columbia. Adam is also the handler of Norman, a highly trained police dog. Late one evening, Adam gets a call that there's a small boy missing from a camping area nearby, and all three of them respond. The boy is quickly found, unharmed, but Norman also finds some bones. Adult human bones.

      These bones are quickly determined to be the bones of Brian Nowak, a man who disappeared fifteen years ago. In an uncomfortable coincidence, Molly Smith, then known by the name her mother gave her, Moonlight, was a good friend of Brian's daughter Nicole. She had spent the previous night with her friend, and was the last person outside the family to see Brian before his disappearance while Nicole, her mother, and her brother Kyle were at church.

      The reopening of the investigation brings Nicole Nowak back from Vancouver, and forces Kyle, now an artist whose works become more disturbing the longer you look at them, to occasionally emerge from his basement apartment in his mother's house. The constable who investigated at the time of the disappearance, Paul Keller, is now the Chief Constable in Trafalgar, and can't resist getting involved in this reopened investigation. This brings him back into contact with Molly/Moonlight's recently widowed mother, Lucky Smith--whose hippie background and leftist politics aren't a comfortable match for becoming interested in a police officer. (Or for having a police officer as a daughter, but what's a mother to do?) Meanwhile, Molly is learning things about her old friend's life since she left town at sixteen, and her current career (not interior decorating, as she claims), and part of Nicole's new life follows her to Trafalgar, creating a danger for some of the young girls in town.

      As old questions get asked again, and previously overlooked stones are turned over, the entanglement of personal and professional, and past and present, creates tensions all over town, and leads to an unexpected answer to the mystery of why Brian Nowak disappeared, and how he wound up dead in the woods outside town.

      This is a neat, intricate mystery with wonderfully developed, complex characters. Highly recommended.

      I received a free electronic galley from the publisher via NetGalley.
    • 4/5
      This is the fifth book in the Constable Molly Smith series set in Trafalgar, British Columbia. When bones belonging to Brian Nowak are discovered fifteen years after his disappearance a new investigation is opened. His daughter was Molly's best friend and Molly was one of the last people to see him alive before he disappeared. Molly and her boss, Sergeant John Winters begin to question former witnesses to see if they remember anything. Years later his family thought he left him for another woman. Just before disappearing he withdrew $10,000 from a retirement account. His artist son believed he was a womanizer, his wife has become a recluse, and his daughter went on to be a hooker/scam artist.

      There are numerous characters that provide lots of local charm, particularly Molly's mother, Lucky, a former hippie. I really like this series, more on the cozy side than gritty. It's set in a atmospheric place and the characters are first rate. This is an enjoyable series that doesn't need to be read in order.
    • 3/5
      When RCMP officer Adam Tocek along with his girlfriend Constable Molly Smith of the Trafalgar police locate a boy who wandered from his campsite in the nearby provincial park, they happen across some human bones. The first person that pops into Molly's mind is the father of one of her childhood friends who went missing about 15 years earlier. Can the bones be identified? Was foul play involved? If so, who committed the deed and why? It will be up to Molly's colleagues to find out. I loved the characters of Adam and Molly and of most of the people in the town. They were quite fun and pleasant. This novel, however, did have a few problems. The one that nagged at me from early in the book is an error which showed poor research on the part of the author. They were discussing the find of the bones and how identification could be made through DNA. One of the characters made the statement that mitochondrial DNA could be collected for comparison. Then they went to the son of the person to whom they believed the bones belonged to attempt to collect a sample. Mitochondrial DNA is passed along by the mother instead of the father, so the son would not have been a match had he agreed to give a sample. Instead, they should have been collecting a sample from a sibling of the person. Fortunately, the son refused to give a sample, and they ended up making identification through dental records, so I didn't have to congratulate them upon finding their mother's brother. There were a few proofreading errors that would not have been caught by spell check that were present. I'm also pretty sure that the dish one of the characters enjoyed while dining was huevos rancheros instead of huveros rancheros as the book stated. In spite of the problems, the characters make this an enjoyable read. This review is based on an Advanced Readers Copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley.
    • 4/5
      I'm probably the type of reader that drives some authors wild. I'll find a mystery series that I really like and instead of keeping current with it, I'll save it for when I need a 100% guaranteed good read. Vicki Delany's Constable Molly Smith series is one on that special list. The writing is so good that it doesn't matter how long I go between books, I always know exactly where I am in the lives of the characters. Well, I needed a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool good read, so I picked up Among the Departed, the fifth book in the Constable Molly Smith series. I wasn't disappointed. (Hey, that's why this series is on my list!)From the crackerjack opening involving a lost child, the pace never falters. Once you start learning about the characters involved in the investigation, it's not difficult to piece together whodunit. The real question is how was it done, and Delany certainly knows how to keep us guessing while she advances the lives of her main characters.Molly and her mother are still grieving over the loss of someone dear to them, but the two women are going through the process in different ways-- which definitely suits police officer Molly and her tie-dye Hippie mother, Lucky. Another interesting character is John Winters' wife who is an aging fashion model. Not only is the marriage a weird pairing-- police officer and high fashion model-- the beautiful Mrs. Winters is turning into a much more delineated character than I'd originally expected. Readers are treated to the daily lives of police officers and, in addition, how a model's life changes once she begins to age. Plus, what's happened to each member of the Nowak family is quite sobering.Yes indeed. Delany has created a series with a perfect setting, strong stories, and memorable characters. As I was reading Among the Departed, I kept getting the nagging feeling that this series reminded me of another author's. Finally, it came to me: Elly Griffiths and her Dr. Ruth Galloway mysteries. Does that make some of you sit up and take notice? Good! I'd hate for you to miss out on some fine reading.