All Good People Here

 All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers, 336 pages.

Margot Davies has been haunted her whole life by the murder of January Jacobs, her childhood neighbor and friend who was murdered when they were six. When she returns to her uncle's house in Wakarusa, Indiana, she finds that very little has changed. Soon after she arrives another little girl in the next town over is murdered, and the cases look similar to her reporter's eye. As she begins to investigate she finds plenty of secrets in the quiet town, and she'll need to find even more to solve a murder that's twenty years cold.

I quite liked this twisty mystery. It did a really good job having a mystery that was easy enough to follow (and to often get exactly one or two steps ahead of), but was not so obvious that it offered no surprises. It's the kind of book that makes me feel a little clever reading it. Although I will admit that by the end there are so many twists that the series of events twenty years ago begins to feel extremely improbable (I won't elaborate for spoilers reasons). I found the ending frustrating, and overall found Flowers' second book a more compelling portrayal of small town life, but I still thought this was a really interesting book, and an engaging mystery.