Mystery Review: 'Deadly Sanctuary' by Sylvia Nobel

I don’t expect much from this kind of mystery story. It’s filler, basically, mindless entertainment with a bit of a puzzle to generate some suspense. A few interesting characters, a well-realised setting, a gradual reveal of clues - it’s not much to ask. Sadly, this book fails to reach even these minimal qualifications for me. None of the characters had much personality, especially the heroine, the desert setting never came alive and the solution to the mystery was fairly obvious (I skipped to the end to check my guess). Add in a rather bland writing style and an over-heavy romantic sub-plot, and it just didn’t work for me. That’s just a matter of personal taste, and it’s a perfectly competent effort which (apparently) lots of people have enjoyed, and there are more in the series, but I’ll pass. One star for a DNF.