{"id":5651,"date":"2024-05-29T07:02:53","date_gmt":"2024-05-29T14:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5651"},"modified":"2024-05-29T07:02:53","modified_gmt":"2024-05-29T14:02:53","slug":"m-e-hilliard-smoke-and-mirrors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/m-e-hilliard-smoke-and-mirrors\/","title":{"rendered":"M.E. Hilliard: Smoke and Mirrors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greer Hogan #4<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Since the first book in this series (The Unkindness of Ravens<\/em>), librarian Greer Hogan has been working through the aftermath of her husband\u2019s murder.\u00a0 While she\u2019s upright and functional, his death feels unresolved, and she\u2019s not so sure the right person is in prison. While she has a job, she\u2019s taken on a temporary one in New York City, archiving the collection of a magician.\u00a0 The gig comes with an apartment across the street, and the archiving job gives her the flexibility she needs for sleuthing.\u00a0 It also comes with an assistant: the aptly named \u201cGrim\u201d (short for Grimaldi), a former magician himself, is helping out by archiving the straight up magic tricks part of the collection, while Greer herself sticks to books.\u00a0 She decides to trust him early on and he proves to be incredibly useful.<\/p>\n

Greer begins her search by returning to her husband\u2019s office and meeting with the remaining corporate officers of the company, ostensibly to make sure there\u2019s nothing she missed in the office clean up that followed his death, but really to get a beady eye on them and see what secrets they might be hiding.\u00a0 As she leaves, she catches the eye of an employee she doesn\u2019t know and they end up meeting off site.\u00a0 He has secrets to tell.<\/p>\n

She also meets with her former neighbors who are delighted to see her and are able to add some clues to a timeline she already has set up, further convincing her that the wrong man is indeed in prison for the crime.<\/p>\n

Hilliard does a nice job setting up Greer\u2019s very interesting job, her personality, and the way she\u2019s dealing with her grief (partially, of course, by investigating her husband\u2019s murder).\u00a0 She brings you right into Greer\u2019s life and you are rooting for her to figure out what happened. The clues turn out to be pretty tricky and Greer assembles a team \u2013 a former assistant of her husband\u2019s joins a couple of neighbors and the ever useful Grim.<\/p>\n

She and Grim keep just on the right side of the law.\u00a0 Greer\u2019s righteous anger is inflamed when a man is attacked on her parent\u2019s porch, and dealing with this incident out of town also gives her some perspective into her ongoing investigation.\u00a0 The police aren\u2019t so convinced that there\u2019s any connection between the crimes in this book and her husband\u2019s murder, so she and Grim are often exploring on their own.<\/p>\n

This was paced a bit slowly.\u00a0 I enjoyed the characters and the setting, and the resolution and the clues it rested on were pretty clever.\u00a0 \u00a0This is a very pleasant and intelligent read.\u00a0 — Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Greer Hogan #4 Since the first book in this series (The Unkindness of Ravens), librarian Greer Hogan has been working through the aftermath of her husband\u2019s murder.\u00a0 While she\u2019s upright and functional, his death feels unresolved, and she\u2019s not so sure the right person is in prison. While she has a job, she\u2019s taken on … 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":[1057,98,1648,1652,1651,1650,1108,1653,1649],"class_list":["post-5651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-amateur-sleuth","tag-crooked-lane","tag-greer-hogan","tag-grief","tag-librarians","tag-m-e-hilliard","tag-magicians","tag-robjn-agnew","tag-smoke-and-mirrors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5651","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=5651"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5693,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5651\/revisions\/5693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}