The Silent Suspect is the third (and final?) installment in Nell Pattison’s Paige Northwood mystery series. You can find reviews for the first two books here on the blog. In truth, by now, I’m reading this series just to see what happens with Paige and her boyfriend Max and will she finally realize their relationship has run its course and admit her feelings for D.S. Singh.
The perplexing mystery in this installment is slightly hampered by Paige’s disconnect from the investigation. As a witness, she’s cut off from acting as a consultant/interpreter for the police, though she still, quite ill-advisedly, carries out an off book investigation with the social worker she’s contracted to work with for part of the week.
Now working as an interpreter for the social worker she met in the previous book, having a steady source of income/work has allowed Paige the financial stability to finally pay down the debts that her ex Mike left her with several years ago. One evening Lukas, one of Sasha’s deaf social work clients, calls Paige in a panic: his house is ablaze—can she call the fire service? After Paige calls emergency services, she races over to Lukas’s home to assist him as an interpreter in communicating with first responders.
While Lukas survives the conflagration, his wife’s body is rescued from the flames; however, evidence reveals she was dead before the fire even started. Lukas immediately clams up and refuses to speak to the investigating officers and to Sasha, his social worker. Lacking evidence to the contrary and without Lukas’s cooperation, the police arrest him and charge him with his wife’s murder. But Sasha cannot fathom Lukas laying a finger on his wife, let alone killing her, so she ropes a reluctant Paige (who does the same old ‘I’m not getting involved’ song and dance even as she does the thing she says she’s not going to do) into digging around and investigating in an attempt to help Lukas. And, frankly, by now it strains the bounds of credibility that Sasha and Paige’s unsanctioned investigation would truly turn up anything the police investigation wouldn’t.
Meanwhile Paige’s personal life destabilizes when her boyfriend Max asks her to move in with him. but Paige’s doubts about the permanence of their future together instead eventually leads to the end of their relationship (finally). Let’s be honest. When you’re constantly tamping down doubts and the knowledge that you don’t see a future with your boyfriend, it’s time to move on. No matter how much you care for your significant other, it’s cruel to string them along when you know your views of where the relationship is going don’t align.
While Pattison whips out a couple good twists in terms of the plot, it’s a weakness when your main character continues to make the same mistakes over several installments and disappointing when those mistakes destroy an important relationship for the main character. There’s also the regrettably one dimensional minor character of D.I. Forest whose grumpiness and resistance to Paige’s expertise throughout this series has slid into downright smug nastiness in this installment as it is unceremoniously revealed to the reader that she’s been gunning for Singh for a while. While the mystery portion of this story is wrapped up, the characters’ stories are unfortunately left unfinished. The reader is left wondering the fate of this series—is it done? Or will Paige return in a future installment?
A Series of (Un)Fortunate Reviews 