The Silver Shadow. Liz Tolsma. 2021. [May] 256 pages. [Source: Review copy]
First sentence: “What is this?” Balding Joe Ward, his light-colored hair curling over his ears, smacked his copy of the Denver Post against his desk. A whiff of newsprint filled the city editor’s office.
Premise/plot: Polly Blythe works at the Denver Post newspaper. She covers the society pages--and hates it, mostly. She wants to cover REAL news, not sensationalized society fluff pieces. The novel is set in Denver, Colorado, circa 1900/1901. The city is about to experience a series of attacks--muggings-- targeting women. As Polly becomes interested in the case and covering it--off and on--the attacker seems to focus on HER specifically. Will she live long enough to see him arrested and charged with his crimes?
As a journalist she is seeking information--inside information--and one of her sources is a handsome police officer, Edwin Timmer. These two will work closely--perhaps not by his choice, at first. Can he protect the woman he's coming to love?
My thoughts: The Silver Shadow is the eleventh book in the True Colors series. These books are usually based on true crimes from American history. This book is very loosely based on a true crime case in Denver at the turn of the century. In reality, that criminal was never caught. In the novel, we get everything tied up neatly with ribbons and bows.
If you enjoy mystery and suspense with your romance, this one might suit well. It wasn't personally my favorite and best from the series. There were a couple of things that irritated me about The Silver Shadow.
What bothered me most was the red herring. For two-hundred pages it is hinted sometimes strongly, sometimes weakly, that the criminal is...well...I won't share his name for obvious spoiler reasons. Something BIG happens. And then it's revealed like in the last two chapters that it was RANDOM person whom we've never met. Since we've spent some of almost every chapter inside his head, it seems tricksy to have it turn out to be RANDOM DUDE as opposed to red herring. Granted, about halfway through I was like this is most likely a red herring because all directions are pointing straight to him. Still I was looking for any indication that it was someone else--anyone else--and the clues never really pointed anywhere (else). It was just frustrating as a mystery to have nothing to work with but misdirection.
Another thing that bothered me was learning at the end of the novel that in reality the criminal was never caught, never arrested, never put on trial, and that essentially the whole book has been misdirection.
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