"Three Graves Full" Jamie Mason

Jason has killed someone and buried him in the backyard.  The body's existence is getting to him like Poe's Tell-Tale Heart.  To move forward with his life, Jason has called a landscaper to put some shrubbery in the front yard, far away from his own private cemetery.  The problem is that the landscaper finds a body buried under the flowerbeds.  The police find yet another body when they come to investigate.  Three bodies and Jason only knows who one of them is.

Leah's fiance disappeared without a trace, but his car was found burning in a woods outside of town.  She is not really upset about the lying philanderer being gone, but Leah wants closure so that she doesn't have to worry about him coming back.

This is the intriguing beginning to Jamie Mason's "Three Graves Full."  The story is told from various points of view, even that of the dog.  We know from the beginning that there have been at least three murders, or at the least three deaths, that seem unconnected except for all being buried in Jason's yard.  Detectives Blayard and Ford have to sort out the facts of these three deaths while the various murderers and victims offer misdirection at best.

It is hard to talk about the story without providing spoilers, so leave it to say that there are some interesting twists and turns to the mystery that keep the reader interested all the way to the satisfying conclusion.

However, I can talk about the writing.  I thought it was uneven.  The point of view would shift in the middle of a chapter, sometimes multiple times, and often jarringly. The purpose of re-positioning the reader is clear - we need to see the action from multiple perspectives and the views of the characters differ significantly and in a way that makes the story interesting.  Granted, I was reading an unpublished galley, and possibly in the final version there are more visual cues to a change in perspective,like a gap between paragraphs or a marker of some kind, but in the galley there was no warning, and so the first sentence of a paragraph often seemed like a non sequitur and it takes a moment to catch up with the story.  And this happened often. Annoyingly.

Another issue was the large fraction of the book that holds the reader in tension without release.  I should be happy that the level and length of the tension was not formulaic, but it was still uncomfortable to be tense for about almost a quarter of the book.  I think the changing points of view were intended to help modulate the tension, but I think they only aggravated it.

Regardless, the story is suspenseful and fulfilling.  The characters are worth getting to know, especially the dog.  I think this is the type of book my roommate would like to read, and I will be on the lookout for more Jamie Mason.