In which trek reviews The Lord Is My Shepherd

One of the reasons why I invested in my Kindle (Wi-Fi)was the plethora of free and low-cost books available. In addition to Amazon's offerings, Project Gutenberg is a good resource for classics and other public domain texts.

Aside: I feel the need to make an observation here. I've come across quite a few discussion threads and other complaints about Amazon having the "nerve" to charge for books which are freely available other places around the Internet. I respond: if you were to walk into a local brick and mortar Borders, you would not expect them to hand you a copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmesjust because the Barnes & Noble down the street or across town was giving away free copies. You would hie your letter-loving self over to B&N to collect your free book.

It is silly for people to complain that Amazon is charging for a book that is free elsewhere. While I do not claim that this is the case for all of the texts available on the Project Gutenberg site, many of them were scanned but never proofread. This means that you might find a word hyphenated in the middle of a line, "charm-ing", because in the hard copy which was scanned, the word charming was broken across two lines of text. If Amazon is selling an ebook which has had value added, I'm guessing that they are covering the editor's fees. If you don't want that added value, download your copy free from Project Gutenberg.

We now return to our regularly scheduled book review...

The very first book I read cover to cover, as it were, was The Accidental Demon Slayer. I had downloaded it for free during the interval that it was on Amazon's limited time promotional list. In case you missed it, my review is over here.

Despite not really enjoying the first freebie, I continued to scan the promotional list daily. This does not fall under the definition of insanity since the book choices change.

Today's review topic is Debbie Viguie's The Lord Is My Shepherd, the first in her The Psalm 23 Mystery series. I downloaded this title back when it was on Amazon's promotional list and it bubbled up to the top of the TBR pile a couple of days ago.

Church secretary Cindy Preston's Presbyterian church is right next-door to rabbi Jeremiah Silverman's synagogue. On the Monday of Holy Week, Cindy enters the sanctuary to find a dead body. She screams of surprise reaches Jeremiah, who has just arrived in the adjacent parking lot. Note: Kudos to Viguie for successfully pulling off this unorthodox pairing of amateur sleuths! Cindy and Jeremiah become entangled in the events of Holy Week and Passover in a chilling way as a string of murders unfolds.

The serial killer is methodical and thorough, arranging his victims in tableaus reminiscent of the key events of Holy Week: the triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the driving of the money-lenders from the temple, the Last Supper. Together with Detective Mark Walters, the ecumenical investigators witness the escalation, hoping that they can prevent the murderer from what they fear is his intended climax: the destruction of First Shepherd church.

While Viguie is already an established author, this is her first foray into murder mysteries and I think she's done quite a good job. Viguie had clearly done her research. The Passover prayers are given in Hebrew and the descriptions of the ritual purification preceding the Passover Seder are quite detailed as are the killer's picture perfect presentations of the events of Holy Week. She unfolds the story at a good pace and with a light hand. Viguie delicately throws in a red herring early on that actually works as a plot device to introduce a crucial piece of evidence. She does it so well that the reader is not left thinking, "oh, look, big fat red herring right there!"

I wouldn't categorize this particular series as a "cozy", despite the title scheme and religious themes contained within it. This series opener definitely rates as a suspense thriller. I think I'd have to award this tale about a 7.5 on the creepy-feeling-I'm-not-sure-I-want-to-read-this-just-before-bed meter if it wasn't for the cleverly inserted bits of humor (spoiler alert).

Now, I'm off to acquire the second installment of the series, I Shall Not Want. Hmm, let's see here, that is the second half of the first verse of the 23rd psalm. There are six verses in the psalm and each one of them is divided into two or more phrases... Looks like there could be an awful lot of good reading here.