{"id":3546,"date":"2020-01-31T06:41:50","date_gmt":"2020-01-31T14:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3546"},"modified":"2020-01-31T06:44:32","modified_gmt":"2020-01-31T14:44:32","slug":"hillary-davidson-dont-look-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/hillary-davidson-dont-look-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Hilary Davidson: Don’t Look Down"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This tightly woven thriller-slash-police procedural is set in New York City, and like that city, the pace does not let up, from first page to last.\u00a0 It opens with Jo Greaver, a young cosmetics magnate, on her way to meet her blackmailer, toting a huge bag of cash.\u00a0 To the reader it\u2019s not clear why she\u2019s being blackmailed or who is doing the blackmailing, but it\u2019s very clear something is very wrong and that very definitely something will go<\/em> wrong.<\/p>\n

It does, and it\u2019s a cascade of wrong things, things that string poor Jo up tighter and tighter.\u00a0 There\u2019s a shootout at the blackmail meetup, leaving Jo injured.\u00a0 She attempts to get through her day pretending she\u2019s fine but the pain finally kicks in.\u00a0 There\u2019s a dead, or at least seriously injured person, at the blackmail meetup.\u00a0 And the police have a bag load of evidence tagging Jo as the murderer.<\/p>\n

This novel is told through Jo\u2019s lens, but also through the lenses of Detectives Sheryn Sterling and her injured partner, Rafael Mendoza.\u00a0 Sterling and Mendoza are very good detectives and as they unravel the occurrences in the tiny apartment where Jo left her money, they begin to doubt their initial conclusions.<\/p>\n

This is a rare thriller in that, along with telling a story, the reader is also given insight into the situations of the characters.\u00a0 Jo is being blackmailed, yes, but why <\/em>is she being blackmailed?\u00a0 The reason leads to a rift between her and her boyfriend and the reason is also painfully powerful.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to judge Jo the more you discover what she\u2019s gone through.<\/p>\n

To a lesser extent, Sharyn\u2019s situation is also a part of the story.\u00a0 An African American woman, she isn\u2019t encountering discrimination on the job (as has been the case in so many female led police novels through the years), but out in the world, something brought into sharp focus when her son is arrested at a demonstration.\u00a0 It colors her thinking in the best of ways: it makes her more empathetic.<\/p>\n

The dynamic between these two women powers the novel as much as the plot, which is a beautifully constructed mechanism of well-tuned gears.\u00a0 This book was very difficult to put down, but it was also difficult to stop thinking about it after I finished reading it.\u00a0 If you\u2019re a fan of smart thrillers, pick this one up.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This tightly woven thriller-slash-police procedural is set in New York City, and like that city, the pace does not let up, from first page to last.\u00a0 It opens with Jo Greaver, a young cosmetics magnate, on her way to meet her blackmailer, toting a huge bag of cash.\u00a0 To the reader it\u2019s not clear why … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[301,238,8,13,302],"class_list":["post-3546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-hilary-davidson","tag-new-york-city","tag-police","tag-suspensethriller","tag-thomas-mercer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3546"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3549,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3546\/revisions\/3549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}