Review: Body of Evidence

Body of Evidence by Irene Hannon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

2.5 stars 

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. 

After all, what were the odds that the deaths of two older residents of rural Missouri who didn't appear linked in any way and who had no fortune worth stealing could be anything but natural? 

Body of Evidence is book three in the Triple Threat series about the Reilly sisters. Youngest sister Grace is a forensic pathologist who travels six rural Missouri counties doing autopsies. When what looks like an attempted robbery may or may not have led to the death of an older woman, Grace conducts the autopsy and sees odd similarities to another older man's death. Coincidences that could easily be written off but when she finds what looks like sunflower seeds in both their stomachs, it bothers her enough to talk to the new Sheriff. Sheriff Nate has only been four months on the job but as former Special Forces, it doesn't take him much to get up to speed. He's willing to look a little further into these deaths, especially when it will give him more time around Grace. 

He could let her walk away---or lay it on the line and possibly set himself up for a fall. 

I hadn't read the previous books in the series but had no problem jumping in as this was fully Grace's story. Her sisters make appearances and bring in some of that sibling love and dynamics that I enjoy. With parents and a brother that had passed away, Nate only had a sister-in-law to show readers other sides of his personality and I missed him having a friend dynamic. He was in a dead end relationship of eight months when he meets Grace but after feeling the spark with Grace, he breaks up with her. This is Christian fiction, so the talk of morals and values comes on quick and their relationship is more about sensing each other is “The One”, they don't even get to go on a first date and readers won't see lingering touches until the epilogue. 

Maybe the murderer had, indeed, devised the perfect homicide. 

But she wasn't about to cede victory to BK until every stone had been overturned. 

The murder mystery was the main story here and we get povs from numerous people; players, the villain, and red-herrings. I liked how readers were let in on the why, insurance fraud scheme, and a who, an insurance salesman Dave is being blackmailed for cheating on his wife and forced to sell bogus claims to older citizens at the instance of a mysterious “BK”. The main villain pov of BK gives us their thoughts, feelings, and why they're doing this, bitter about how they're life turned out and enjoying how they're getting the best of people by being so smart but it's up to the reader to try and find out the identity of BK along with Grace and Nate. It was fun to have a little more information that Grace and Nate and travel along with them as they worked to figure things out but still keep some of the mystery for the reader to guess at as they don't know the identity of BK either. 

Because almost from the day they'd met, he'd known Grace Reilly was special---and that this moment would come. 

This was closer to a police procedural, mystery, than a romance for me but Grace and Nate do keep in touch throughout with conversations, they just happen to be mostly conversations about autopsies. I missed some of that relationship development as they immediately just felt like there was The One possibilities with the other. As I mentioned, this is Christian fiction so along with the more common no getting physical and no cursing, there was minimal mentions of going to church. I read very few Christian fiction, so the part where the reverend was automatically considered a trustworthy witness solely because he was a man of god made my eye twitch a bit, the underlining linking of stronger morals and values to religious people, and the tone that rural areas are automatically better than urban was a little off-putting to me. Obviously, elements that probably wouldn't bother regular Christian readers and I was a little shocked at the more to the side the talk of church and prayer was. If you're looking for a police procedural murder mystery (the instrument used for death was very interesting) with some feelings between the sheriff and forensic pathologist, this could be one to pick up.

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