Audiobook Review: To Darkness and to Death by Julia Spencer-Fleming

To Darkness and to Death
Author: Julia Spencer-Fleming
Narrator: Suzanne Toren
Series: Ferguson/Van Alstyne Mysteries (Book 4)
Publication: Blackstone Audio (December 13, 2018)
Length: 14 hours and 5 minutes

Description: In the small Adirondack town of Millers Kill, an old lumberman sits in the dark with his gun across his knees. Not far away, an unemployed logger sleeps off his bender from the night before. The owner of the town's last paper mill tosses in his bed. And a young woman, one of three heirs to the 250,000-acre Great Camp, wakes alone in darkness, bound and gagged.

Chief of police Russ Van Alstyne wants nothing more than a quiet day of hunting in the mountains on his 50th birthday. His wife needs to have the town's new luxury resort ready for its gala opening night. The Reverend Clare Fergusson expects to spend the day getting St. Alban's Church ready for the bishop's annual visit. Her long-distance suitor from New York expects some answers about their relationship during his weekend in town.

In Millers Kill, where everyone knows everyone and all are part of an interconnected web of blood or acquaintance, one person's troubles have a way of ensnaring others. What begins as a simple case of a woman lost in the woods leads to a tangle of revenge, blackmail, assault, kidnapping, and murder. As the hours tick by, Russ and Clare struggle to make sense of their town's plunge into chaos - and their own chaotic emotions.

Something terrible waits in the ice-rimed mountains cradling Millers Kill. Something that won't be content with just one death - or two.

In To Darkness and to Death, Julia Spencer-Fleming continues her moving story of the way a small town, as well as a great city, can harbor evil, and the struggle of two honest people to deal with the ever-present threat of their feelings for one another.

My Thoughts: It's Russ's fiftieth birthday and he's hunting with a friend with the new gun his wife Linda gave him. Linda is busy finishing her drapery order before the new resort opens. Clare is supposed to be preparing for the bishop's annual visit but gets called out by search-and-rescue to help locate a missing young woman. 

In the background to all of this is the pending sale of a 250-thousand acre Great Camp. The missing woman is one of three heirs who should be getting ready to sign the paperwork selling the camp and putting it into a nature conservancy. 

Closing the camp to logging has an impact on many of the locals including Russ's hunting companion who is being forced into retirement and the closure of his logging company and a young man named Randy who is one of his former employees and is now jobless. The hunting buddy is especially impacted because his daughter works for the conservancy that is putting him out of business. The owner of the local papermill is also greatly affected since it will mean closing his five-generation family business. 

When the hunting companion's daughter is found badly beaten and near to death on a logging road near the camp, it is first thought that she was the missing woman the search-and-rescue had been called out to find. 

This was a twisty and engaging story filled with villains who are both stupid and self-serving. And in the background, Russ and Clare are trying to find the honorable thing to do about their relationship. They are in love but have other promises that get in the way of them being together in Russ's case or forming a new relationship in Clare's.

Both the twisty mystery and the equally twisty relationship issues kept me listening long into the night. 

I bought this one from Chirp January 4, 2024. You can buy your copy here.