A good mystery | The Scent of Rain and Lightning: A Novel

Disappointing Ending | The Scent of Rain and Lightning: A Novel | Nancy Pickard

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	• The Scent of Rain and Lightning: A Novel Nancy Pickard Ballantine Books, 2010 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 71 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A page-turning story with depth

Is it a mystery? Is it a character study? Is it literary fiction or just entertainment?

Trying to answer the above in my own mind has been difficult since I finished reading this novel yesterday. Set in tiny Rose, Kansas and featuring the Linder family (ranchers and most influential, wealthy family in the region) you get all of the above. Jody Linder's father was murdered when she was three years old and her mother disappeared that same night and has never been found. When Jody returns to Rose to teach English at the high school, her uncles arrive at her home one afternoon to inform her that the man convicted of her father's killing is being let out of jail and new trial has been ordered. Just about everyone in town is convinced he did it and even if he didn't, the guy was a trouble-maker so they don't really care.

While at the heart of the story lies the murder and the reader is constantly kept guessing about who actually did it and what actually happened to Jody's mother, there is an incredible amount of story around the people who populate this novel -- the Linder family and all their complicated relationships, Billy Crosby (the convicted murderer) and his family as well as other townspeople that surround them. The author does an excellent job of letting us get a glimpse into many different lives and see the world through their eyes. In that aspect, the novel feels much more like literary fiction than suspense/mystery.

Great character study, great sense of place, intriguing plot twists. I would recommend this to just about anyone who enjoys a well-written book and think it would particularly appeal to fans of Chris Bohjalian.

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A good mystery

Jody Linder has suffered the murder of her beloved father and the disappearance of her mother since she was a small child. She has been raised by her grandparents and her uncles.

When the story opens, she has just graduated from college and is living in her family home where her father was murdered. Her uncles have come to visit and to let he know that her father's murderer, is being released from prison.

What ensues from that moment are encounters with her father's killer, more deaths and family secrets that will rend Jody's family apart.

The story keeps you guessing and the ending is a total suprise. The twist at the end was a total shock.

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Disappointing Ending

We read this for book club and I found it very enjoyable until the very end. I did not see any clues to support this character as the killer and only one out of 8 in our group, had the slightest clue about the identity. One woman said it best "this isn't a mystery (clues leading to a logical conclusion) this is a drama". No mystery, no putting together clues that fit. The author got carried away in the end and really it ruined the book for me, almost like she ran out of energy, time or pages to finish the story properly. Too bad, with a good ending, it would have been an entertaining read.

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Pickard Has Herself a New Fan..........(ME!)

On a stormy night, twenty three years ago, in the rural ranching community of Rose Kansas, Hugh-Jay Linder, eldest son of the most respected family in town, is brutally murdered, his wife missing, their child now deeply disturbed...

Jody Linder has now grown, and her Uncles have come to her place, in a group, to inform her that the man that was placed in prison all those years ago is now set free and coming back to town. She's shocked, of course, and deeply disturbed at how this could possibly be so...

With this gut-wrenching piece of news, we are now thrust upon the Now, the Present, of this gripping mystery and how it affects the entire Linder family, and also the whole community of Rose, Kansas.

Life and things, as we know, are not always what they seem, or what we have always been led to believe they were. This story is a fabulous, well-written, book, with great three-dimensional character development, with both tender and also gut-wrenchingly tense interactions between people and how they have been affected, and what they believe happened all those years ago.

Today Billy Crosby is coming home, back to Rose, Kansas, from his prison confinement, and like it or not, the Linders and the entire community will now face the events, once again, that happened all those years ago. But....are they really what everyone has believed, or was it different, was it even more tragic than what everyone had thought for all those years? Nancy Pickard lets you know in a wonderfully constructed and deeply moving page turner...

I'm betting that you'll really love this great book!

~operabruin

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Great Book!

Good read! This is the first Nancy Pickard book that I have read. I was pleased with her character building, she really brought all the characters to life! This is a light read and definitely hit the spot for what I was looking for. You wont be disappointed with this book! Enjoy!

One beautiful summer afternoon, from her bedroom window on the second floor, Jody Linder is unnerved to see her three uncles parking their pickups in front of her parents? house?or what she calls her parents? house, even though Jay and Laurie Jo Linder have been gone almost all of Jody?s life. ?What is this fearsome thing I see?? the young high school English teacher whispers, mimicking Shakespeare. Polished boots, pressed jeans, fresh white shirts, Stetsons?her uncles? suspiciously clean visiting clothes are a disturbing sign.

The three bring shocking news: The man convicted of murdering Jody?s father is being released from prison and returning to the small town of Rose, Kansas. It has been twenty-six years since that stormy night when, as baby Jody lay asleep in her crib, her father was shot and killed and her mother disappeared, presumed dead. Neither the protective embrace of Jody?s uncles nor the safe haven of her grandparents? ranch could erase the pain caused by Billy Crosby on that catastrophic night.

Now Billy Crosby has been granted a new trial, thanks in large part to the efforts of his son, Collin, a lawyer who has spent most of his life trying to prove his father?s innocence. As Jody lives only a few doors down from the Crosbys, she knows that sooner or later she?ll come face-to-face with the man who she believes destroyed her family.

What she doesn?t expect are the heated exchanges with Collin. Having grown up practically side by side in this very small town, Jody and Collin have had a long history of carefully avoiding each other?s eyes. Now Jody discovers that underneath their antagonism is a shared sense of loss that no one else could possibly understand. As she revisits old wounds, startling revelations compel her to uncover the dangerous truth about her family?s tragic past.

Engrossing, lyrical, and suspenseful, The Scent of Rain and Lightning captures the essence of small-town America?its heartfelt intimacy and its darkest secrets?where through struggle and hardship people still dare to hope for a better future. For Jody Linder, maybe even love.

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