The Long Fall (A Smiley and McBlythe Mystery, #2)

This is novella book two in the Smiley and McBlythe Mystery series and sees Steve Smiley and Heather McBlythe called in to solve a murder case, first thought to be a suicide. Steve and Heather are both former police detectives and Heather is also an attorney and they use their previous skills to run their own private investigator business. Steve is blind now, after an attack in which his wife was killed and he was blinded. But having lost his sight means he can concentrate on other things and to ignore what might be in plain sight, and more about what is below the surface. The hotel they have been called to by a former colleague of Steve’s, Houston homicide detective Leo Vega, who has unfortunately been partnered up with an unfit and alcoholic cop called Randy Tubbs, who wants the most obvious and easiest conclusion for the case and calls it an apparent suicide. The dead man is Victor Yancy, a successful inventor and businessman having taken a dive from supposedly the top floor.

Victor had called in four former classmates, who helped work on his first invention, to meet a day early for their twentieth class reunion, telling them that it will be worth their while. His wife Tabby was a former minor actress, who married for money and stability and was trying to win her husband back. The former classmates are Cassie New, Bradeh Patel, Michelle Chan and her husband Dirk Stewart, and Lewis Chan. Each had a reason to want him dead, after he cut them out of his first invention, which most of them had helped him start to create in a physics class back in high school. Tubby end sup arresting an obvious suspect, once it has been proven to be murder, but again does it without much evidence or any real reasoning.

Steve and Heather have to work their way through all the obvious suspects, plus a few more connected to the victim and suspects lives. Each has to be investigated and questioned and the geometry of the initial fall will soon give the P.I.’s a new murder location and a suspect that seems a bit too easy to blame. There is more to this case than is obvious and Steve and Heather are the ideal pair to get to the bottom of it. There are obvious clues, but then also lots of twists and unexpected clues, which take the team on to different paths and end up with the true identity of the killer. This is only a novella, but it packs in enough information and details for the whole murder case to be complex, yet solved within the remit of its pages. An interesting team of P.I.’s with ideal work backgrounds and one with a disability that he turns around into an almost super power, to help solve their cases. I can’t wait for more with this interesting duo. I received an ARC copy of this book from BookSprout and I have freely given my own opinion of the book above.