An Error in Judgment (Susan Schreyer)

Title: An Error in Judgment
Author: Susan Schreyer
Available from: Amazon

I received this book as an author giveaway to read and review. Happily, I liked it!

I did not realize this is the third Thea Campbell story. It is delightful. The story is told in the first-person point of view and it absolutely works because Thea is such a great character. I found myself really wanting to know what she would say or do next. She’s funny, but not that laugh-out-loud or slapstick kind of funny – I’d say more quirky funny. If she was a real person, I’d want to be her friend.

The story can’t be classified as a thriller, but it’s not claiming to be one, either. It moves along at a steady clip, not too slow or too fast. I learned a little about the world of dressage, a little about fossils and fossil collecting, just enough to leave me wanting more. There’s a murder, a family gathering for the funeral, an interesting cast of characters, shenanigans to throw the reader off the scent of the real killer and everything comes together at the end.

In my opinion, Schreyer’s great talent is in her characterization. Even minor characters are fantastic. God help me – I even wanted more of Birgit and Vince. And I would have loved it if Thea could have been at the reading of the will. I’ll bet that was a fun time!

OK, on the negative side, I really don’t like the cover art. It looks like something I’d put together, and I know just enough about Photoshop to be dangerous.

Would I have bought this book? At $5.99, probably not because I’d never read anything by this author before. Having read it, would I buy more Thea Campbell stories, which are all in that price range for the Kindle? They meet my criteria for being priced in the same range I’ve paid for paperback so I’d have to say yes, with the qualification that I’d read all the less-expensive books I own, any less-expensive books I’m likely to buy, and the 100 or so books on my public library e-book wishlist first. (Let me just note – the paperback is priced at a whopping $16 on Amazon. As soon as I pick myself up off the floor, I’ll ask if paperback prices have gone up dramatically in the last year, or is the Costco book table really that much cheaper?)

All in all, it’s a good read and I think readers will continue to like Thea Campbell for some time to come.