The Girl in the Moss (Angie Pallorino #3) by Loreth Anne White–a review

THE GIRL IN THE MOSS (Angie Pallorino #3) by Loreth Anne White-a review

Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / Amazon.uk /B&N / Chapters Indigo /

ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date June 12, 2018

A shallow grave exposes deadly secrets as bestselling author Loreth Anne White brings her thrilling series of romantic suspense to its shocking conclusion…

Disgraced ex-cop Angie Pallorino is determined to make a new start for herself as a private investigator. But first, she and her lover, newly promoted homicide detective James Maddocks, attempt a quiet getaway to rekindle a romance struggling in the shadows of their careers. The peace doesn’t last long when human skeletal remains are found in a nearby mossy grove.
This decades-old mystery is just what Angie needs to establish her new career—even as it thrusts her and Maddocks back into the media spotlight, once again endangering their tenuous relationship.

Then, when Angie’s inquiry into the old crime intersects with a cold case from her own policing past—one that a detective on Maddocks’s new team is working—the investigation takes a startling twist. It puts more than Angie’s last shot at redemption and a future with Maddocks at risk. The mystery of the girl in the moss could kill her.

•••••••

REVIEW: THE GIRL IN THE MOSS is the third instalment in Loreth Anne White’s contemporary, adult ANGIE PALLORINO murder/mystery/suspense series focusing on former Vancouver Police Department sex crimes Detective Angie Pallorino, and her partner/lover Detective Sergeant James Maddocks. THE GIRL IN THE MOSS can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty. Any important information from the previous story lines is revealed where necessary but I recommend reading the series in order for cohesion especially as it pertains to our heroine’s back story.

Told from several third person perspectives including Angie Pallorino THE GIRL IN THE MOSS picks up several months after THE LULLABY GIRL (#2) and finds our heroine without purpose. Fired for going rogue as a detective with the Vancouver Police Department sex crimes unit, Angie Pallorino is working towards her PI certificate but the fame of notoriety is wreaking havoc with her current job. While on vacation, Angie and her lover Detective Sergeant James Maddocks will stumble upon a shallow grave believed to be the burial place of a young woman thought missing and drowned twenty-four years earlier. A phone call from the deceased woman’s family finds our heroine back on the hunt for answers, a hunt that leads Angie to a small town of hunters, lies, and closed door secrets. What ensues is a complex investigation and the detective work of one woman, as she battles her own personal demons, and the town residents who are desperate to keep buried sins of the past.

Meanwhile, Detective Sergeant James Maddocks offers up an ultimatum to the woman he loves. Unable to let go of the past, Angie struggles with the possibility of rejection including by the man that calls to her heart. James and his fellow detectives begin analysing a series of cold case files, files that will lead back to Angie’s current murder investigation.

THE GIRL IN THE MOSS is a mosaic of details and revelations from potential killers, to puzzling clues, clandestine lovers and secret lives. Old wounds will be opened, and families will be destroyed as one woman must come to terms with the necessity and determination to bring justice for a woman long thought buried and gone.

Loreth Anne White writes with purpose; an architect of amazing talent as her story line slowly gathers the momentum towards the final reveal. THE GIRL IN THE MOSS is a story of suspense and mystery; secrets and lies; violence and murder but ultimately a story of family and loss.

Reading Order and Previous Reviews
The Drowned Girls
The Lullaby Girl
The Girl in the Moss

Copy supplied by Netgalley

Reviewed by Sandy

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The Lullaby Girl (Angie Pallorino #2) by Loreth Anne White-Review, Interview & Giveaway

THE LULLABY GIRL (Angie Pallorino #2) by Loreth Anne White-Review, Interview & Giveaway

The Lullaby Girl Banner

THE LULLABY GIRL
Angie Pallorino #2
by Loreth Anne White
Release Date: November 14, 2017
Genre: adult, contemporary, murder, mystery, suspense

The Lullaby Girl

Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / B&N / Chapters Indigo /

ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date November 14, 2017

Detective Angie Pallorino took down a serial killer permanently and, according to her superiors, with excessive force. Benched on a desk assignment for twelve months, Angie struggles to maintain her sense of identity—if she’s not a detective, who is she? Then a decades-old cold case washes ashore, pulling her into an investigation she recognizes as deeply personal.

Angie’s lover and partner, James Maddocks, sees it, too. But spearheading an ongoing probe into a sex-trafficking ring and keeping Angie’s increasing obsession with her case in check is taking its toll. However, as startling connections between the parallel investigations emerge, Maddocks realizes he has more than Angie’s emotional state to worry about.

Driven and desperate to solve her case, Angie goes rogue, risking her relationship, career, and very life in pursuit of answers. She’ll learn that some truths are too painful to bear, and some sacrifices include collateral damage.

But Angie Pallorino won’t let it go. She can’t. It’s not in her blood.

•••••••••••••

REVIEW: THE LULLABY GIRL is the second instalment in Loreth Anne White’s contemporary, adult ANGIE PALLORINO murder/mystery/suspense series focusing on Vancouver Police Department sex crimes Detective Angie Pallorino, and her partner/lover Detective Sergeant James Maddocks. THE LULLABY GIRL can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty. Any important information from the previous story line is revealed where necessary but I recommend reading the series in order for backstory and cohesion.

Told from several third person perspectives including Angie and James THE LULLABY GIRL picks up immediately after the events of book one-The Drowned Girls-in which Angie Pallorino discovered that the life she lived has been based on a lie. Our heroine has recently been demoted and assigned desk duty in the face of violent take-down that was deemed excessive and unnecessary. Now with time on her hands, Angie begins a personal investigation into a thirty-year old cold case that will alter her life in more ways than one. Going rogue, and without the help of the man that she loves, Angie will come face to face with her past-a deadly encounter meant to end her life-a second time around.

Meanwhile, James Maddocks investigation into a sex-trafficking ring has caught the attention of the FBI and Canada’s RCMP. Partnering with the elite forces James will discover similarities between his case, and the one Angie has been investigating; and a potential showdown with the people in charge places Angie in the direct line of fire as she inserts herself where she doesn’t belong.

THE LULLABY GIRL is a story of betrayal and revenge, of power and control. The imagery and descriptive nature of the story line is dramatic and realistic. The emotional fall out is palpable and intense; the suspense is riveting and powerful. Loreth Anne White’s attention to detail is brilliant; the character development and world building is phenomenal; the energy and passion inspiring; the delivery fluent and artistic- a movie for the mind.

Reading Order and Previous Reviews
The Drowned Girls
The Lullaby Girl

Copy supplied by the publisher through Netgalley

Reviewed by Sandy

Interview

TRC: Hi Loreth and welcome to The Reading Café.

Congratulations on the recent release of THE LULLABY GIRL.We would like to start with some background information.

Would you please tell us something about yourself?

Loreth Anne White 2Follow: Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads / Website

Loreth: Thank you for having me here! I’m excited to share Book 2 in my Angie Pallorino series with everyone. I’m a South-African-born-and-raised Canadian who lives in the stunning but wet, cold, and grey mountains of the Pacific Northwest. While it’s chocolate-box beautiful I miss blue African skies and sunshine and the wild ocean like a small hole in my soul. Like most writers, I’ve always loved books and stories. I’m a wife, a mother, a pet and nature lover, and weather influences my moods far more than it probably should.

TRC: Who or what influenced your career in writing?

Loreth: I’ve been lucky to have been surrounded by people who fed me books and stories from a very young age. From my Dutch grandfather, to my mother and father, my English teachers at school, my lecturers at university. Over the years these people all kept opening doors with secret keys to worlds of imagination.

TRC: What challenges or difficulties have you encountered writing and publishing your stories?

Loreth: Early on, when I first seriously sat down to write a novel, I was still working as a journalist. By far the most challenging hurdle was to come home after a day of overtime, deadlines, and solid writing at work, and then to try and write even more at night and over weekends while still balancing family commitments. Also, at that time, my girls were young, we were new immigrants who lived in a very small space. Our jobs were insecure, and I had no writing corner I could truly call my own—I wrote at a tiny table in our bedroom for the most part, where I could hear the noisy neighbours through the thin condo walls. Writing a novel, in some respects, seemed a ludicrous idea at the time. But I managed to sell that first one to New York, and while many more challenges lay ahead–and still do—it’s a journey I am pleased I started, and it’s a road I am happy to travel.

The Lullaby GirlTRC: Would you please tell us something about the premise of THE LULLABY GIRL and the Angie Pallorino series?

Loreth: My Detective Angie Pallorino starts out in The Drowned Girls working sex crimes. It’s her wheelhouse. She’s good at it, and fiercely-driven to do it for reasons she doesn’t fully understand at the start of the series. By the end of that first book Angie has taken down a serial killer, permanently, and according to her superiors, with excessive force. Now, in The Lullaby Girl, Angie is forced back into uniform and she’s been benched on a desk assignment for 12 months. This challenges Angie in every way possible—if she’s not a detective, who is she? Then a decades-old cold case washes ashore, and Angie is pulled into an investigation she recognizes as deeply, frighteningly, personal. It could be a key to her past.

Driven and desperate to solve her own cold case in spite of her probation, Angie goes rogue, risking her relationship with Detective Maddocks, her career, and her very life in pursuit of the answers to her origins. But Angie will learn that some truths might be too painful to bear, and some sacrifices include collateral damage. And she’ll have to make some hard choices.

TRC: What type of research/plotting do you do, and how long do you spend researching /plotting before beginning a book?

Loreth: It depends on the story. I read non-fiction books, biographies, watch videos, movies, interview experts, do courses, and attend workshops. For example, for my Angie series, I read text books written for cops on how to investigate various kinds of homicides and crimes. I’ve done workshops conducted by law enforcement personnel, spoken with cops, and attended events like the wonderful Writers Police Academy that comes complete with hands-on weapons experience. And of course, there’s the writing craft aspect as well—for that, also courses, workshops, and better than anything—reading other novels in the genre.

TRC: How do you keep the plot(s) unpredictable without sacrificing content and believeability?

Loreth: I can only hope the plots are unpredictable while still delivering on genre expectations! I think the key is to develop rich characters who have their own unique takes on a plot situation, and to allow a unique setting to become character as well. Combined with one’s own voice and one’s own world view, hopefully the result is something fresh.

TRC: How did publishing your first book change your writing process?

Loreth: Hah! My editors and reviewers and readers all began to sit on my shoulder as I wrote. They’d jeer and point at the screen and yell: no, no ways can you do that! Oh no, that sucks, that’s silly!! …. I still struggle to shut them out and let my ‘girls in the basement’ loose–in private–on the first draft.

TRC: What was your hardest scene –ever-to write?

Loreth: I can’t think that there was any one scene particularly harder to write over any other. I do however find sex scenes challenging to craft because they need to deliver so much in a romance novel, in terms of not being gratuitous, in showing real character development, in driving the plot forward, and in still complicating or ramping up the suspense element of a romantic suspense.

TRC: Do you believe the cover image plays a deciding factor for many readers in the process of selecting a book or new series to read?

Loreth: Yes!

The Drowned GirlsTRC: When writing a story line, do the characters direct the writing or do you direct the characters?

Loreth: They go hand-in-hand as the story develops.

TRC: How do you select the names of your characters?

Loreth: I do think about marketing and back cover copy when I consider names. I think about what might resonate with readers, and how some names might put readers off reading a story. Also, I try limit names starting with the same letter, or ones that sound too similar. And then I consider the sound of the name itself and try to match it to character. For example, for a certain kind of hero, or villain, one might want a harsher, or shorter sounding word. Or maybe something softer for a female character. Or, if she’s bad-ass, maybe certain names could undermine that tough quality. Then … at the final stage, an editor might still ask you to change a name! This happened to me with my book A Dark Lure. Cole, my hero, was initially named Hunter, and I was (rightly) asked to change this because of the hunting theme and metaphors already playing strongly through the novel. But to this day, when I get reader letters that mention Cole, I scratch my head thinking, who in the hell is Cole!? (to me, he’s still Hunter 🙂

TRC: The mark of a good writer is to pull the reader into the story line so that they experience the emotions along with the characters. What do you believe a writer must do to make this happen? Where do you believe writer’s fail in this endeavor?

Loreth: This is a big craft question! Bottom line, I think the key is to have real-time, blow-by-blow beats occurring in a scene–without summarizing–in order to make readers feel right there, part of the unfolding events. The summarizing–or introspection or ‘telling’–works better in the sequels that bridge the real-time scenes. It also helps to decide on who the focal character in each scene will be, and what his or her scene goal is. This goal, ideally, should be apparent to the reader at the outset, and the blows should come as that goal is obstructed beat-by-beat throughout that scene—either via dialogue/argument, events, or physical action. And at the end of that scene, that focal character should have arrived at a new direction, a next scene goal in mind.

TRC: Do you listen to music while writing? If so, does the style of music influence the storyline direction? Characters?

Loreth: I used to. Now I prefer quiet. But I do listen to music in between, or before writing, to set mood/tone. And yes, I pick music I think might help amplify the tone I am seeking.

TRC: What do you believe is the biggest misconception people have about authors?

Loreth: That authors enjoy writing!

TRC: What is something that few, if anybody, knows about you?

Loreth: Ooh, I don’t know … I was a competitive swimmer and once eyed by coaches as a potential Olympic hopeful. I still love long-distance, open-water swimming and have trained in the past with guys like Lewis Pugh who have crossed the English Channel and who swim the most extreme polar ends of the earth. I enjoy cooking, but not baking. I cannot sing to save my life but wish I could. I don’t like ice cream.

TRC: On what are you currently working?

Loreth: Right now I’m tackling a project that is challenging me in new ways. It requires more research than I’ve ever done. There is an epic romance at the core—a love triangle–where my characters face impossible choices against extraordinary circumstances. And there’s a mystery. It’s something that is really pushing me beyond my traditional comfort zone. Which is both a good thing and scary! I’m terribly excited about it so far, but the perennial writerly struggle remains: Will I ever be able to meet my own vision for this idea? Perhaps not. But as my mother-in-law used to say: if you aim for the star you might hit the top of the tree. Heh. So I’m trying.

LIGHTNING ROUND

● Favorite Food – cheese!

● Favorite Dessert – more cheese! (and dark chocolate and espresso coffee)

● Favorite TV Show – too many to name, but at the moment I am hooked on several great Nordic noir-ish crime series, and UK and other European crime shows.

● Last Movie You Saw – Victoria and Abdul

● Dark or Milk Chocolatedefinitely dark and fine and bitter

● Secret Celebrity Crush I love Helen Mirren, Judy Dench, Emma Thompson – all wonderful celebrity role models who show women both young and old that females can age with ferocity and grace and embrace the wisdom acquired over years on this earth, and who are not shy of the wrinkles that come with that hard-won place.

● Last Vacation Destination – Australia

● Do you have any pets? – Hudson and Brunswick, my black labradog and my orange cat, and some wild birds who flap outside my window to be hand fed.

● Last book you read – Love In The Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

TRC: Thank you Loreth for taking the time to answer our questions. Congratulations on the release of THE LULLABY GIRL. We wish you all the best.

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The Drowned Girls (Angie Pallorino #1) by Loreth Anne White-a review

THE DROWNED GIRLS (Angie Pallorino #1) by Loreth Anne White

The Drowned Girls

Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / B&N / KOBO / Chapters Indigo /

ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date June 20, 2017

He surfaced two years ago. Then he disappeared …

But Detective Angie Pallorino never forgot the violent rapist who left a distinctive calling card—crosses etched into the flesh of his victim’s foreheads.

When a comatose Jane Doe is found in a local cemetery, sexually assaulted, mutilated, and nearly drowned, Angie is struck by the eerie similarities to her earlier unsolved rapes. Could he be back?

Then the body of a drowned young woman floats up in the Gorge, also bearing the marks of the serial rapist, and the hunt for a predator becomes a hunt for a killer. Assigned to the joint investigative task force, Angie is more than ready to prove that she has what it takes to break into the all-male homicide division. But her private life collides with her professional ambitions when she’s introduced to her temporary partner, James Maddocks—a man she’d met the night before in an intense, anonymous encounter.

Together, Angie and Maddocks agree to put that night behind them. But as their search for the killer intensifies so does their mutual desire. And Angie’s forays into the mind of a monster shake lose some unsettling secrets about her own past . . .

How can she fight for the truth when it turns out her whole life is a lie?

••••••••••••

REVIEW: THE DROWNED GIRLS is the first installment in Loreth Anne White’s adult, contemporary ANGIE PALLORINO mystery/ psychological crime thriller series with the addition of a little forbidden love and romance.

NOTE: THE DROWNED GIRLS contains mature scenarios of graphic violence, abuse and sexual mutilation that may not be suitable for all readers.

Told from several third person perspectives THE DROWNED GIRLS follows numerous paths that focus on the resurgence of a violent rapist who has upped his MO turning to mutilation and murder. Detective Angie Pallorino works the sex crimes division of the Metro Vancouver police department and the recent spate of violent sexual assaults is eerily similar to a couple of unsolved cases from years before. When the latest assault victim dies of her injuries, and another body washes up on shore, Angie finds herself with a new partner-homicide detective James Maddocks-a one night stand that demands something more. What ensues is the search for a killer while Angie and James battle the upheaval in their own personal lives-back home.

THE DROWNED GIRLS is a story within a story; a dark and gritty tale of a psychopath; a serial rapist and murderer who uses religion as his justification for his actions but THE DROWNED GIRLS is also a story that reveals the depths to which the powerful elite will bury their sins for a piece of the pie. The world building takes the reader into the seedy underbelly of a city gripped by fear; of a people controlled by sex and drugs; of a police department that begins to turn upon its self. As the Metro Vancouver PD begin to uncover the truth, secrets, lies, and betrayal become road blocks to stopping a killer who is devolving with every victim and assault.

Similar to Silence of the Lambs with a police department ala Law and Order: SVU THE DROWNED GIRLS is a suspenseful, descriptive story line with palpable energy where the reader looks into the killer’s mind-his needs, his rituals, his rationalization for all the he does-Norman Bates meets Hannibal Lecter with all of the gory details and graphic imagery that a psychological thriller throws at the reader. The character development sets the stage for the who, what, and why ; the world building is rich in technological detailed narration and presentation; the romance is the forbidden fruit between two peoples whose personal lives have fallen into the abyss-Angie Pallorino is desperate to escape Wonderland and uncover the truth.

THE DROWNED GIRLS is a decadent, intriguing and enthralling story line; an energetic and dramatic look the people and places behind the headlines and stories that affect us all. The premise is complex and chaotic; the characters are numerous, sensational and charismatic; the romance struggles in the face of duty, secrets, lies and the unknown. Loreth Anne White’s THE DROWNED GIRLS is a powerful tale with memorable characters, and disturbing situations against the backdrop of Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Copy supplied by Netgalley

Reviewed by Sandy

About the Author

Loreth Anne White 2

Loreth Anne White is an award-winning, best-selling author of romantic suspense, thrillers, and mysteries. She has won the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Romantic Suspense, the National Readers’ Choice Award, and the Romantic Crown for Best Romantic Suspense and Best Book Overall. In addition, she is a three-time RITA finalist, a Booksellers’ Best finalist, a multiple Daphne Du Maurier Award finalist, and a multiple CataRomance Reviewers’ Choice Award winner. A former journalist and newspaper editor who has worked in both South Africa and Canada, she now resides in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest with her family.

When she’s not writing you will find her skiing, biking or hiking the trails with her Black Dog, and generally trying to avoid the bears – albeit unsuccessfully. She calls this work, because it’s when the best ideas come!

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