All We Buried by Elena Taylor
What's It About?
If you are a fan of small-town crime novels with lots of complexity and intrigue, I highly recommend this book.You know those mysteries that grab you and don’t let go? I started reading All We Buried (Crooked Lane Books) by Elena Taylor just before bed one evening, thinking I would plan to finish it in a few days. I finished it at 2:45 a.m. because I couldn’t stop reading it.
Every town has those tales about the past — the haunted house, the mysterious cemetery. In Collier, the story that haunts the town is one about the mine explosion generations ago that killed all but one miner and sent a train into the deepest depths of Lake Collier.
Today, on its surface, the small town of Collier, Washington, appears to be a lazy little hamlet where nothing happens and very little changes, but just like the lake where no fish live, the currents of danger and deception run deep beneath the surface.
There’s a New Sheriff in Town
Less than a year ago, Elizabeth “Bet” Rivers was an LA police officer aspiring to become a detective. Now, she finds herself the interim Sheriff of Collier, stepping in when her father became ill and passed away. Instead of studying for the detective exam, she is somehow locked in an election campaign with her deputy.
But, when a researcher studying a local lake finds the body of a young woman wrapped in a tarp floating in the water, a series of events are set in motion that will change the town and Bet forever. It will be her first homicide case as sheriff, and she won’t have the backing of a big-city forensics department to figure it all out.
As Bet and her team delve deeper into the case, and she questions the researcher’s motives, she also encounters the son of the landowner who left decades ago and swore he’d never return, tourists that don’t belong, and her ex — indeed the last person she needs to be dealing with. On top of everything else, someone is leaving her threatening notes telling her to leave town.
Captivating, Scary and Intense
I enjoyed that, in addition to the novel’s main characters, past generations, the lake, the mountain range, and the town itself are pivotal characters in the book. Taylor creates such a compelling world that is captivating, scary, intense and steeped in history, poor decisions and betrayal.
This book tells an intense story about the lies that hide under the surface within families and how they come back to haunt future generations. It is also a pulse-pounding, action-packed thriller that will have you constantly concerned for and in awe of Bet. Although she has her insecurities, she is tough, ingenious, tenacious and clever. She gives off the vibes of other great detectives of classic modern mysteries — like Kay Scarpetta and Temperance Brennan.
If you are a fan of small-town crime novels with lots of complexity and intrigue, I highly recommend Elena Taylor’s All We Buried. It was a thrilling start to a mystery series I hope will bring us much more of Bet Rivers and Collier, Washington.
About Elena Taylor:
Elena Taylor worked in theater for twenty years before she turned her storytelling skills to fiction. Elena was a playwright, director, designer, technician and educator. She taught a variety of theater classes at the college/university level, as well as Popular Fiction. She also teaches workshops on writing and works one-on-one with writers as a developmental editor and writing coach. She is also the author of a private eye series, published under the name Elena Hartwell. When she’s not writing, she can be found playing with her horses, dog, cats, and hanging out with her husband at their home on the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River.
