Call After Midnight

Great and a good buy.

Review first published on my blog The Fictional Reader

I bought a copy of this in a secondhand shop in Dublin because a) it was super cheap and b) I love Tess Gerritsen’s mysteries. And it seemed to be about 300-330 pages at first. Until I realized that the last 60 or so pages are previews of two of her other books.

This book only has like 250 pages! For a mystery book, I feel like that’s difficult. In my opinion, a mystery needs time to develop and build the tension, and this book lacked in that department because of the length.

In general though, I quite liked the mystery. It starts with an assassin murdering an assassin. And then Sarah gets a call. Her husband has been found dead in a hotel in Berlin. Only Sarah thought he was in London. She doesn’t believe he died, and wants to find out what happened -which is where Nick O’Hara from the U.S. State Department comes in. I had fun with the mystery -even though I had to suspend my disbelief at times.

The biggest reason I only gave this book 3 stars -aside from the length- is the romance, and how prevalent it was. First of all, Sarah had only married Geoffrey 2 or 3 months ago. She had only known him for 6 months. How do you marry someone you’ve only known for 6 months? That aside, she discovers some things about Geoffrey that make her believe she never really knew him. (I’ll try to hold in my DUH! here). And that’s where the romance with Nick starts. And I feel bad for not liking the romance, because I LOVED Nick’s character. He was an honest, smart and kind person. But you can’t fall out of love with someone in a few days, and fall in love with an entirely new person! Especially when you are a) so dependent on the new person and b) he must be intertwined with your husband’s tragedy in your mind.

This book is consistent with most of TG's book ( I've read almost all of them). It follows the same formula:
1.woman in trouble,
2.she meets a love interest who wants to protect her,
3.they fall in love,
4.there is tension and distrust between them,
5.he saves her and becomes her hero
If you like TG and this formula, you'll like this book and every other book.