The Last Move by Mary Burton

Narrated by Teri Schnaubelt

I had success last year listening to Mary Burton’s The Hangman so I was keen to listen to The Last Move. Unfortunately, the balance of romance vs. suspense wasn’t to my liking this time – there is hardly any romance – but the suspense was gripping.

Detective Theo Mazur is working in San Antonio, Texas, having transferred there six months earlier from the Chicago PD. He had been a captain there but after his marriage broke down, his ex-wife took a job in San Antonio and with her went his 14-year-old daughter. The marriage had been in trouble beforehand, but what killed it was the death from SIDS of their infant son Caleb. Having lost one child, Theo was not going to lose another and so he took a professional hit to be in the same location as his daughter, Alyssa.

Mazur (as he it most often called in the book) is called out to a murder scene. A woman has been shot in the chest by the side of I-35 and the circumstances are eerily similar to a serial killer dubbed by the press as “the Samaritan”. Except, six months earlier, the Samaritan had been arrested by Dr. Kate Hayden from the FBI. So, either she got the wrong guy or there is a copy cat on the loose.

Kate is called away from the search for a serial killer who likes to keep young women in coffin-like boxes. She was instrumental in saving his last victim but the killer is still at large. Leaving her partner to continue looking for the bad guy, Kate heads down to San Antonio.

As it happens, San Antonio is Kate’s hometown. She hasn’t been back since she left for college. When she was in high school, both she and her father were shot by an ex-boyfriend of hers. Kate’s father died and Kate still feels guilty about it.

Almost all of the book takes place in less than a week. The suspense plot is very twisty and there were some surprises I really wasn’t expecting at all. There were also things which felt undeveloped at times or, at the least, somewhat curious. Sometimes these things were explained later in the story; other times I was left with questions. However, for the most part, the suspense worked well and told a tense, if extremely dark, story.

Because the story takes place over so short a time frame and against the background of an active and developing murder investigation where it is apparent there are more victims to come, of necessity, there’s not a lot of time for romance. While I certainly heard that Mazur and Kate were physically attracted to one another, I didn’t really feel much of their emotional connection for much of the book. Kate is socially awkward and reserved. On a good day she is prickly. So when she suddenly propositions Mazur it felt a bit more like she was scratching an itch than anything else.

Of the pair, Mazur was the one more in touch with his emotions. Kate didn’t initially want to explore a relationship at all after their night of intimacy. Until she does. That about sums up the romance. There was a promising ending but I needed more during the course of the book to cement their emotional attraction for me to really buy their HFN.

The narration was pretty good. Teri Schnaubelt is a new-to-me narrator but I gather she is very experienced – a search at Audible shows up more than 100 results. And her experience shows. Technically, the listen was smooth and professional. There were a couple of times when the wrong character voice was used to deliver a line but only a couple, and it was otherwise a polished performance.

Ms. Schnaubelt depicted Kate’s social awkwardness well – perhaps a little too well as it was a barrier for me accepting the romance between her and Mazur. Mazur’s voice was deeper and a little husky which worked for me and was easily identifiable.

Given the setting, there were also a number of Latinx secondary characters and Ms. Schnaubelt portrayed those accents believably without dropping into caricature.

The Last Move works better as a suspense with a dash of romance rather than as a romantic suspense. It’s perhaps a small distinction but I’m sure romance listeners will understand me!

Kaetrin