{"id":3995,"date":"2021-04-01T04:42:39","date_gmt":"2021-04-01T11:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3995"},"modified":"2021-04-01T04:42:39","modified_gmt":"2021-04-01T11:42:39","slug":"paula-munier-the-hiding-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/paula-munier-the-hiding-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Paula Munier: The Hiding Place"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This is a favorite new series.\u00a0 The books feature Mercy Carr and her military dog, Elvis, who have come home to Vermont to nurse their wounds (and their PTSD) after losing the love of both their lives, Martinez, in Afghanistan.\u00a0 Both have reacclimated to a degree, though Mercy has a hard time with trust and tends to hold herself back when it comes to relationships.\u00a0 While Mercy is slightly on the outs with her perhaps boyfriend, game warden Troy, her life is a full one.\u00a0 She\u2019s taken in a teenage mother, her baby, and her boyfriend; she has a tight relationship with her grandmother, Patience, a vet; and she and Elvis are now working as a complete team.<\/p>\n

Into every life a little rain must fall, however, and someone turns up claiming that Elvis is his, and that Martinez had only had him on loan.\u00a0 He wants him back.\u00a0 This is a shadow throughout the book as the man tells her Elvis\u2019 life with her is too dangerous.\u00a0 He has a point – in every book so far, Elvis faces a near death situation.\u00a0 It\u2019s troubling Mercy, but she\u2019s quickly drawn into an investigation when a pipe bomb explodes on her grandmother\u2019s doorstep, sending both women to the hospital.<\/p>\n

In the course of her investigation (she\u2019s being monitored by Troy on instructions from his boss), she discovers a body.\u00a0 It\u2019s added to the recently discovered body of a scientist who had been studying moose.\u00a0 There\u2019s also an old mystery to be solved, perhaps tying into the new one, of a long missing woman.\u00a0 These threads are seamlessly integrated, and the book has a wonderful storytelling rhythm.<\/p>\n

There are several things that set these books apart. While it was more of a feature in the first book, Mercy is a huge fan of Shakespeare, and there are a generous number of quotes scattered through the books, mostly advancing the plot.\u00a0 The setting is a character \u2013 Vermont in all it\u2019s glory and nature in all its brutality as well as its beauty is beautifully defined and described.\u00a0 And Elvis, the dog, is a nicely nuanced character but he\u2019s still very much a dog. He\u2019s not anthropomorphized. \u00a0His skillset (he alerts to dead bodies, guns and bombs) often comes in useful.<\/p>\n

These are action packed novels, and Mercy takes a beating as much as V.I. Warshawski ever did, refusing to let herself heal, instead hurling herself back into action at every opportunity.\u00a0 As in V.I.\u2019s case, this involves a giant amount of stubbornness, but also a giant amount of smarts.\u00a0 Mercy is an excellent detective even though she\u2019s not really on the police force in any way.\u00a0 She\u2019s simply a retired military officer who seems to be discovered by local crime.\u00a0 I\u2019m thinking that thread may need to be resolved to a degree in future novels.<\/p>\n

This is a compelling, well written story, and the characters of both Mercy and Elvis are quickly developing into classics.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t cried so much at the end of a book in a long time.\u00a0 I was pretty sure what was going to happen, but I cried anyway, which is a great endorsement (in my opinion).\u00a0 An author who can make you invested enough in a character to sob about her situation is a talented one.\u00a0 This is a wonderful new series.<\/p>\n

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

This is a favorite new series.\u00a0 The books feature Mercy Carr and her military dog, Elvis, who have come home to Vermont to nurse their wounds (and their PTSD) after losing the love of both their lives, Martinez, in Afghanistan.\u00a0 Both have reacclimated to a degree, though Mercy has a hard time with trust and … 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":[251,539,100,252,541,540,25],"class_list":["post-3995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-dogs","tag-mercy-carr","tag-minotaur-books","tag-paula-munier","tag-shakespeare","tag-the-hiding-place","tag-vermont"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3995","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=3995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3997,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3995\/revisions\/3997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}