Weather and Murder in One
Saturday, March 1st, 2008The Breathtaker by Alice Blanchard
This was an excellent story, creepy, suspenseful, and a little gory in parts. The title is taken from a term for tornadoes, as one can seem to suck the air from where you stand. This was published in 2003, and even made the Today Show bookclub.
Policeman Charlie Grover, who is a widower and the father of a teenage daughter, and local tornado expert and stormchaser Willa Bellman team up as murders are taking place near the scenes of tornados, and made to seem like part of the storm’s destruction. The big giveaway occurs when a storm doesn’t take the path the killer thought it might, so the scheme is revealed, and other recent “tornado deaths” re-examined. Charlie’s father is a stormchaser himself, as are many locals, so the pool of suspects is not exactly small. Local legends from a city further south turn out to have significance. There is your requisite romance, both for Charlie and for his daughter, though they don’t take center stage or distract from the central story, which I appreciate.
I like it - murder mystery and some science education all in one, though as I said, it does get a little gory - if you cannot take precise descriptions of pieces of wood being pulled from bodies without getting squeamish, you might want to skip this one. Still, what is a murder mystery without some blood, right?