Near You by Mary Burton

Narrated by Melissa Moran

Mary Burton’s Near You is the sequel to last year’s Burn You Twice, and it continues the story of two women who were best friends in college and who survived an arson attack that almost killed them both. The previous book focused on Joan Mason, who moved away from Missoula and became a detective in Philly; in Near You, the focus switches to her friend Ann Bailey, who remained in Montana, married her college boyfriend, and continued to live there with her husband and their son – until the devastating events of Burn You Twice ripped her family apart.

There are spoilers for Burn You Twice in this review.

Sergeant Bryce McCabe of the Montana Highway Patrol is enjoying a rare day off at home at his ranch when he receives a call from the local sheriff asking for his help investigating a particularly gruesome homicide. He arrives at the scene to find the charred remains of a woman who is later revealed to have been stabbed several times before having the skin of her face removed, and then doused with gasoline and set alight – exactly as in the case of the victim of an identical murder around a month earlier. Shortly after Bryce’s arrival, Joan Mason – who has taken the position of death investigator for the medical examiner – arrives and makes the same connection; it’s she who suggests they involve Dr. Ann Bailey, a professor of forensic psychology at the University of Montana, whose expertise in the field could be invaluable in getting into the mind of the killer. In the absence of much by way of physical evidence, Bryce is inclined to agree.

It’s been a year since Ann’s late husband was revealed to have been behind the decade-old fire at Ann and Joan’s house and to have set more recent fires in the attempt to throw suspicion back onto Elijah Weston, whose conviction for the original crime had been lately overturned. Ann is finally facing the task of clearing out her former home and getting it ready for sale, and has employed someone who specialises in house clearance and cleaning to do the bulk of the work, but even so, she’s kind of relieved to get a call from Bryce McCabe asking for her help with a case.

As their investigation begins to pick up momentum, Ann starts to believe that the murders may somehow be linked to Weston, who she knows has discovered the secret she’s been keeping for a decade. He would be the obvious suspect considering the fact that the murderer burns the bodies of his victims, but he’s also way too clever to get caught – and doesn’t appear to have a definitive motive. At first glance there’s no real link between the victims – until Ann digs deeper and discovers they were all “fireflies” – women who wrote to Weston while he was in prison and fancied themselves in love with him. And then there’s journalist Paul Thompson who keeps pestering Ann about giving him an interview for a podcast he’s making about Elijah – who interviewed the victims just before their deaths and who seems to have had ample opportunity to commit murder.

The mystery here is every bit as gripping and well-put together as the one in Burn You Twice; well-paced with plenty of twists and turns and some really cleverly placed red herrings. I had a couple of contenders for villain-of-the-piece fairly early on, but I was never quite sure which of them it was until well into the second half, and Ms. Burton once again does a terrific job of building the tension throughout. I liked the way the story is structured as well; the bulk is related by Ann and Bryce, but the addition of some of Paul Thompson’s interviews provides extra, interesting details and the interjections from the killer’s PoV give listeners insight into the warped mind of an obsessive serial murderer.

However, as I looked back at my review for the previous book to check a couple of details, I noticed that some of the weaknesses I’d pointed out there also apply to Near You. I liked Bryce and Ann, but they’re fairly bland – the most interesting character, once again, is Elijah Weston – and I wasn’t convinced by the way Ann – a consultant and not a law enforcement professional – seemed to be leading the investigation and telling Bryce how to go about doing his job. I get that not every character in a romantic suspense novel can be a detective, but I couldn’t buy her level of involvement in every aspect of the case. I also found it difficult to believe she was such a great psychologist and reader of people and yet had no idea what her late husband was up to and was so late to suspect the motives of the villain here.

The romance is very low-key and of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it variety once again. I haven’t read or listened to any of Mary Burton’s earliest books (I started with her Forgotten Files series) so I don’t know if the romantic elements were stronger in them, but honestly, the Romantic Suspense label is a misnomer here. I will say that the relationship between Ann and Bryce is more convincing than the one between Joan and Gideon in the previous book, but both romances are peripheral, and both storylines would have worked perfectly well without them. In the end, authors write what they want to write and that’s fine; the suspense storylines in both these titles are really strong and I enjoyed them. But either do it – romantic suspense – properly and include an actual romance rather than a weak nod towards one, or don’t do it at all and just go with “suspense”.

I’m very much a narrator-led listener so it’s fairly unusual for me to choose an audiobook on the basis of author or synopsis alone, but I did that here because I wanted to get the rest of the story begun in the previous book. (I’d suggest listening to that first, by the way – some reviews say it’s not essential and that this one works as a standalone, but I think listeners will get much more out of it by starting with Burn You Twice.) Knowing what to expect from Melissa Moran this time around may have enabled me to move past some of the problems I had with her narration previously, and I didn’t find her deliberate phrasing and non-use of contractions to be quite so irritating here. They’re still noticeable, but I wasn’t quite as bothered by them. Her voice is easy on the ear and she’s a decent vocal actor; her male voices are believable, each of the characters is portrayed appropriately and she differentiates effectively between all of them. One of the things that did bug me though – and this isn’t Ms. Moran’s fault – was the fact that because the sections narrated by the killer don’t have chapter headers or anything similar, it wasn’t immediately clear who was speaking until I was a line or two in. Obviously, it wouldn’t have been a good idea for Ms. Moran to have used the character voice as it would have revealed the villain’s identity right away, and I’m honestly not sure how this issue could have been solved – so really, I’m just forewarning anyone who is planning on listening to this as to what to expect.

Even though the romance is pretty lacklustre, I enjoyed the suspense plot in Near You and would recommend both it and Burn You Twice to anyone in the mood for a tightly plotted mystery combined with a decent helping of psychological suspense.

Caz

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