It's no secret: Sibella Giorello is on the short list of my favorite authors. Love her. So much. Literary. Street-savvy. Hilarious. Emotional. Tear-worthy. It's all there in the pages of her novels. From laugh out loud malapropisms to gut-wrenching emotional heart pain, Sibella captures the unique characters that surround the one and only Raleigh Harmon. With new additions to the mysteries in each book of the series, black souls appear as malevolent crosses to bear in Raleigh's insatiable searches for truth.
So, in The Moon Stands Still, the seventh book in the Raleigh Harmon Mystery Series, what does the death of a 14 year old during an eclipse on a southwestern beach in Washington have to do with stolen money from the infamous stash of the still undiscovered D. B. Cooper? Money turns up at two distinct and very different locations. One of those stashes, buried in a popular rock hunting locale outside Seattle, is discovered by Raleigh during a geological search with her friend and fellow scientist Lani. This starts a chain of events where Raleigh cuts short a romantic dinner with FBI Agent Jack Stephanson, who's stolen every ounce of her resistance, to inject her findings about the suspicious money.
She's recruited to ascertain the geological implications of the money that's been discovered in the two locations much to the irritation of the FBI Agent coined "The Finder" just a few months before he's set to retire after having worked the D. B. Cooper case until it went frozen. With the "new" money coming into play, her old boss - and Jack's present FBI boss - the man who has a laugh out loud malapropism for every subject and phrase - enlists Raleigh's assistance. She tries to excuse herself because of the case she's been assigned by her boss, the murder of a 14 year old girl in Longbeach, Wa.,threatening to imprison an innocent man, but there'll be none of that. When her former boss stresses there can only be a "plutonic" (platonic) association between her and Jack, she realizes Jack has agreed with apparently no qualms, and her heart fractures with those familiar feelings of abandonment and loss.
This story is filled with the sorrows heaped on Raleigh's soul which sometimes seem to multiply without any apparent end. Her elderly friend Eleanor with whom she lives and who lets her drive the fancy Ghibli, her mother's faithful dog Madame, Jack, and her mentally ill mom all combine to individually bring Raleigh to crisis mode and the kind of sadness that leaves dents in the heart. She's angry, confused, and broken when danger strikes. It's the danger that pushes her back to Jack.
The story twists, turns, weaves in and out of Raleigh's daily emotional pain, striving to discover the secrets to both cases, while Raleigh races to the coast, back to Seattle, back and forth. Attending a D. B. Cooper festival in an old tavern with Eleanor and Jack, she's able to sneak into a hidden room and capture critical revealing photographs. As awkward pieces to a crazy puzzle begin to slowly slip into place, the danger amps up for Raleigh and Jack.
But here's the deal: without the superb writing, the intentional self-examination Raleigh displays throughout these stories, her innate pain, her ultimate faith even when her first choice might be to rely on herself, her disgust at her sold-out attraction to and the constant attempt to deny her love for Jack, these stories would be just more mysteries. But they're not. They're incredibly detailed and intricate, well-imagined and unique, and compelling books with vivid supporting characters, sensory descriptions of people, places, and things, and a heroine with a man's man for a hero who knows how to handle this independent, truth-seeking dynamo with a girly heart who just so desperately wants to be loved for who she is and how she is.
A five-star review for Sibella's latest The Moon Stands Still. Heartbreaking, thrilling, and a life-changing happy ending.
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Felicity Shepherd
Highly Recommended Mystery
Reviewed in Australia on July 12, 2017