Blood Atonement

Blood Atonement is a police procedural like mystery with a twist. Tracking the bad guy is mostly done by Nigle Barnes, a genealogical research specialist. This book is a great introduction to a new mystery series, with characters you'll want to know better. Reginald Hill describes it best, 'sharp plotting, elegant writing, engaging characters and a crackling climax.' When I finished reading this book, I immediately ordered the second book, Blood Atonement.

As a mystery reader and as a genealogist; I only have the following words. Excellent! Mr. Waddell, keep up the good work and churn out more on Foster, Heathre and Nigel. I ready this book in one sitting. Couldn't put it down except for very short breaks. I await your next adventure; writing using genealogy in a book is a very tough thing to do, however, you've done it well.

Detective Chief Inspector Grant Foster arrives at the scene of a particularly gruesome homicide to lead the investigation. In middle class Queens Park section of London, someone cut the throat of thirty seven year old single mom Katie Drake on the birthday of her teenage daughter who just turned fourteen years old daughter. It turns out Naomi is missing. No motive or clues to the daughter's whereabouts surface. As hours pass with nothing, Foster and his peers begin to believe a double homicide occurred and the second corpse will be found shortly. Foster digs into the victim's past to see if a motive surfaces, but to his shock there is no Katie Drake. The Inspector asks Scotland Yard consulting genealogist Nigel Barnes to follow the limited trail. Barnes finds a link back to late Victorian England when a couple came over from the Sates and had ties to the Mormon Church. He and Foster fear further BLOOD ATONEMENT will follow. The sequel to THE BLOOD DETECTIVE is an engaging genealogy murder mystery that is fun to follow but leave your plausibility meter parked elsewhere as the motive is over the top of Big Ben. Still following the inquiry into the history of the Mormon Church is intriguing especially Barnes' investigation as fans, which are willing to ignore believability and too much left to flukes of chance, will enjoy Dan Waddell's rotting family tree whodunit. Harriet Klausner

What first appears to be a heinous murder, gruesome enough in its own right, becomes far more baffling as Detective Chief Inspector Grant Foster and Detective Inspector Heather Jenkins apply their skills to the murder of a single mother found in her garden, her throat slashed, her fourteen-year-old daughter missing, with virtually no clues to identity of the assailant/abductor. Returning to work after a long convalescence, Foster is anxious to get back to the job but is sidelined by an anxious superior, forced to submit to bureaucratic demands regardless of the urgency of the case. And it is that urgency that propels Blood Atonement, the peril of the missing girl and the sense of menace that surrounds the investigation, especially when a direct connection is made to events generations earlier and a continent away, in the United States. Modern day police work in London makes use of technological advances in DNA and- in this unusual case- the efforts of genealogist Nigel Barnes (who has a personal history with Heather Jenkins). Waddell ties the disciplines together to create a plot far more sophisticated than might first appear. As connections are made to other mysterious deaths with blood ties, albeit distant, Foster suspects a series of crimes stemming from a violent family incident. The problem is in locating the other players, intervening to save the life of a young boy in foster care who may be next on the death list. A visit across the ocean to the fabled archives of The Church of the Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah holds the final piece of the puzzle. It is in Salt Lake City that Heather and Nigel discover the seeds of discontent that have reached across the years. Waddell skillfully blends a contemporary investigation with religious beliefs and an outraged family determined to find justice. The reach of the past is seductive and powerful, revenge fueled by one religion's directive that harkens back to the bloody origins of the faith. For all the technological progress, Foster finds the same implacable hatred of one man for another unchanged, blood atonement and religious beliefs secure in the bosom of family. Call it religion or call it cult, the results are equally disturbing, the fate of a fourteen-year-old girl and a troubled boy at stake should Foster dare to stumble. Luan Gaines/2009.