The Shadow of Memory

A Kate Hamilton Mystery, Book 4

By: Connie Berry

Narrated by: Ruth Urquhart

As Kate Hamilton plans her upcoming wedding to Detective Inspector Tom Mallory, she is also assisting her colleague Ivor Tweedy with a project at the Netherfield Sanatorium, which is being converted into luxury townhouses. Kate and Ivor must appraise a fifteenth-century painting and verify that its provenance is the Dutch master Jan Van Eyck. But when retired criminal inspector Will Parker is found dead, Kate learns that the halls of the sanatorium housed much more than priceless art.

Kate is surprised to learn that Will had been the first boyfriend of her friend Vivian Bunn, who hasn’t seen him in fifty-eight years. At a seaside holiday camp over sixty years ago, Will, Vivian, and three other teens broke into an abandoned house where a doctor and his wife had died under bizarre circumstances two years earlier. Now, when a second member of the childhood gang dies unexpectedly—and then a third—it becomes clear that the teens had discovered more in the house than they had realized.

Had Will returned to warn his old love? When Kate makes a shocking connection between a sixty-year-old murder and the long-buried secrets of the sanatorium, she suddenly understands that time is running out for Vivian—and anyone connected to her.

©2022 Connie Berry (P)2022 Dreamscape Media, LLC

5 stars

The Shadow of Memory is well written with engaging characters and an entertaining plot. I look forward to the next book.

Top notch mystery!

Connie Berry's THE SHADOW OF MEMORY is a suspenseful, complicated mystery, or maybe two mysteries, that are super hard to figure out. There's a 60-year-old (accidental?) murder plus a present day killer on the loose. How are they connected? ARE they connected? Five kids playing the game of Clue vs a boardroom of creepy doctors with hidden agendas. And what about those weird "sensings" that heroine Kate experiences at times. In her regular job she authenticates rare art and in her free time she digs out clues to the murders. Can she find the elusive criminal before her friend becomes the next victim?
Oh, and meanwhile she juggles decisions about her upcoming marriage to a handsome detective constable who has a belligerent mother.
Loved the book. The narrator is good.

Fantastic

Kate and Tom draw nearer to an actual wedding, but "it's complicated " Where to live? What careers to pursue? And then there is the problem of Tom's mother. But all that must take a backseat to 60 year old crimes that my or may not be the reason for current deaths, all appearing as natural causes, but all part of Vivian's circle back in 1961. Is Vivian safe? That is the tip of the iceberg in a plot with more twists and turns than a mountain road. Come along for the trip, enjoy the ride. My only negative comment is now I must wait for the next book.

Better

Kate's behavior was more responsible. The mystery was in two parts. one easy to solve; one not so much.