The Breathtaker

April is the Cruelest Month.

It looked like the family was killed by a tornado...the debris, the impossible positioning of the corpses, yet Police Chief Charlie Grover, when he looks at the victims, can't help but wonder differently. Several of the marks look a lot like defensive wounds, and the various bits of wood sticking from their bodies were certainly more weapon like than random kindling. Still, it'll take a gruesome discovery in the lab before he and everyone else is convinced that he's right. You can't blame them...everyone's heard the stories of the weird tragedies and miracles that can happen during a tornado...their town is tight nit group, and no one wants to think one of them might be a killer. The field of possible suspects is pretty narrow, for there is only one group of people who have the innate understanding of when or how a tornado is likely to strike...and only one group who wouldn't be questioned too closely if they happen to be out during one...the storm chasers. Grover's possible suspects include his own father, as well as the rebellious young man his daughter is seeing.

The true excitement of this book lies in the fact that it is set in such a completely different and scary setting. The idea of a tornado coming and taking away everything you own is like a death in itself. It strips us to our most vulnerable, and therefore makes one feel a real connection to the book. Seeing the killer, fearless, slipping like a ghost into a house when you least expect a person to come in is extremely creepy. It also adds a challenge to the forensic aspects of the story...the wind blows clues in and blows them back out again...so how can anyone be sure that a hair or a fragment of cloth is evidence, or if it's merely garbage? It also opens up a whole new world to a lot of us...not just the culture and perspectives of people surviving tornadoes and their aftermath, but the world of the adrenalin junkie storm chasers.

Grover, to solve the case, finds himself actually going on a chase with the lovely Willa Bellman, a scientist at the local wind research facility. Riding along with them, you can't help but feel a mixture of wonder...wonder at how beautiful and terrible the weather must look, wonder at how anyone gets started on this path.

In Charlie Grover, Blanchard gives us a detective with a fairly complex life. When he was a child he suffered horrible burns over much of his body, and the scarring does effect him physically as well as emotionally...and the scars inside are the ones having the hardest time healing. He can't quite forgive his father, an ex-alcoholic who used to beat his wife and son, and he misses his wife, who died from cancer...though he's still extremely attracted to Willa. (This is fine...his wife's been gone a long time, and we want hi to be happy.) He's trying to raise a daughter who, a teenager, is becoming more independent by the day, and though she's really sweet and understanding, she stubbornly sees the good side of the local bad boy, and her refusal to stop seeing him triggers some of their worst fights.

All these aspects make for a very strong mystery. We have equal amounts of interesting setting and characterization, and the mystery is quite a challenge to solve, because the very nature of the crimes makes it hard to establish a real pattern or chain of evidence ...especially since, most of the time, the law enforcement people are more concerned with those left alive than those who look like victims of Mother Nature (who some may call the most vicious serial killer of all). In this story, it's hard for the reader to know what they should fear more...the killer, or the fury of nature.