Buried Secrets–A Sgt. Windflower Mystery is a satisfactory addition to the series. If you are already a Sergeant Windflower fan, then you will enjoy this 11th in the series. I may have enjoyed it more if I had read some of the previous books. As it is, I can only give this one a Three out of Five.
I like the character—he’s a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer and has been for some time. He has a supportive family and is respected amongst his friends and colleagues. As a Cree, He understands the wisdom of his dreams and often seeks the advice of his older relatives and his late Aunt who visits him in dreams. The spiritual side of Windflower is compelling and a big plus.
Windflower has a bunch of problems. A colleague is found dead in her home. Her revolver is missing. A minister dies in his bathtub—just an accident, says everyone. Two other people die in a suspicious car crash. Of course, the deaths turn out to be related—but you already knew that would happen—it’s the how they are related that’s fun to discover.
The problems I have with this story:
- A plethora of characters. Maybe they are all from earlier books in the series, but I was constantly trying to figure out who was who.
- A lot—and I mean A LOT of details from Windflower’s family life. All this is great backstory, but there is waaaaay too much of it for me even though there is a point to it in the context of the series.
- A slowly developing connection between one murder and the other. This took a while to build but was satisfactory.
While the story does stand alone and is self-contained in this book, I think you will enjoy it more if you read the previous books in the series. This one feels like a culmination—or at least a turning point in the long character arc that probably began with book 1. The murder mystery is nicely detailed, and Windflower is a great character. Buried Secrets is a decent read all by itself, and even better if you are already familiar with the series.
