Sibella Giorello

This is the third in a crime series featuring FBI forensic geologist Raleigh Harmon. In this book, she has returned to Richmond, Virginia, after having been banished because of a disciplinary transfer. She is happy to be back, but has to work for a judgmental and somewhat caricatured boss, Victoria Phaup. She is given two tasks: solving a hate crime against a famous black rapper, RPM, who lives on a former plantation, and filling in on a drug-busting task force. When not working the jobs, she is eating massive amounts of fast food (but is still “gorgeous”), trying to see how she feels about her former high school boyfriend Demott Fielding, and worrying about her mother, who is exhibiting worrying dementia-like behavior.

Two rather unexpected themes also weave through the book. One is a Christian emphasis. About half the time it blends in with the plot, but other times, like her lecture about intelligent design, seem contrived. There are also gratuitous (it seemed to me) statements thrown in like about how it felt good to come home, but “it was nothing compared to the feeling of returning to a God who loved me and was waiting for me.”

The second theme is Raleigh’s somewhat bizarre tendency to view everyone’s eyes in terms of rocks. We have eyes like “fractured gray pebbles,” like “birefringent blue prisms” [pedantic for no good reason], “luminous as opals,” "shiny as marbles," and so on.

For the most part the characters were not very nuanced - they tended to be either rock, paper, or scissors, to borrow the author’s tendency for geological metaphors. Her religious metaphors are a bit inept as well, such as when she compared the buildings on a cold Saturday morning in downtown D.C. to “Advent panels nobody would want to open.” I think the author has potential but maybe she tries a bit too hard.… (mehr)

From Amazon:

Raleigh Harmon's life seems as impossible to solve as the high-profile case she's pursuing. Closing her assignment with the FBI's Seattle office, forensic geologist Raleigh Harmon returns to her hometown of Richmond, Virginia, expecting a warm welcome. Instead she finds herself investigating an ugly cross burning at a celebrity's mansion and standing in the cross-hairs of her boss at the Bureau. And the deeper Raleigh digs into the case, the murkier the water becomes . . . until she's left wondering who the real victims might be. To make matters worse, Raleigh's personal life offers almost zero clarity. Her former confidant is suddenly remote while her former boyfriend keeps popping up wherever she goes. And then there's her mother. Raleigh's move home was supposed to improve Nadine's fragile sanity, but instead seems to be making things worse.

My Thoughts:

The Clouds Roll Away is a gritty suspense story that, though it alludes to discussion of faith, faith plays more of a small part in a mostly suspense filled story.
Although I felt the first few chapters were bit slow and the characters starting out were stereotypical and two dimensional, the pace of the book quicken in the middle and held promise...but then the ending had that thrown together feeling. I did find some aspects of the FBI theme compelling and it was interesting how various seemingly unrelated elements pulled together toward the end.… (mehr)