Return to Haven and the darkness beneath the ideal

A small-town PI is drawn into a killer conspiracy…

Private investigator Sonny Rush, the newest resident of Haven, California, knows that this fogbound coastal hamlet is every bit as dangerous as her hometown of Los Angeles. And when teenager and repeat runaway Honor Butler shows up at Sonny’s door with terror in her eyes, Sonny is immediately pulled into a new case that lands close to home.

Desperate, hungry, and in need of someone she can trust, Honor tells Sonny a horrifying story about where she’s been—and what she’s been forced to do. Then, hours later, the forest near Sonny’s cottage yields the remains of a missing day laborer, a man whose wife has been searching for answers for months. Soon, coincidence sharpens into conspiracy.

As Sonny digs deeper, the threads of these cases twist together into something horrifying: a ruthless network preying on the vulnerable, protected by the very people meant to uphold the law. With every step closer to revealing Haven’s corruption, Sonny risks pulling the lives of her loved ones into the cross fire—and exposing the shadows of her own past. Because in this town, loyalty can be fatal, and survival means deciding who you’re willing to betray.

Rachel Howzell Hall’s first Haven novel, Fog & Fury was a very good introduction to Sonny Rush and the ideal-but-only-on-the-surface town of Haven. In Mist & Malice, we pick up Sonny’s story shortly after the end of the first novel, as she continues to wrestle with the fallout of the first novel, even as a new case arises. I enjoyed this, but it wasn’t quite as strong as the first book.

Mist & Malice offers much of what the first book in the series does: Sonny Rush, former LAPD cop continues to try to make a life in Haven, haunted by her long-running affair with a local luminary and the fallout from her previous case. The characters are well-drawn, and those that return are further fleshed-out. They are well-realized and realistic, the antagonists are cartoon-ish or two-dimensional. I thought Sonny was maybe a little less consistent in this book, but not in a jarring way. Some of her decisions were also impulsive and slightly confusing.

If you’re a fan of Hall’s crime/mystery novels already, then I’m sure you’ll find much of what you’ve enjoyed in her previous novels. The pacing is good, the plot is well-done, the author’s prose is well-composed throughout. But there was just something about Mist & Malice that didn’t feel as satisfying or substantial as the previous book. It’s odd to think this, because plenty happens in it. The case at its centre was interesting and didn’t follow a predictable/cliché route. I definitely liked that it picked up the story pretty much immediately after the end of Fog & Fury: it very much felt like a continuation of the story, which is not always the case when it comes to crime/thriller series. (I don’t think anyone should start here: read book one, first.)

I’ll certainly be reading a third Haven novel, if one materializes, and I continue to be a fan of the author’s work. I’ll give any of her new series/stand-alones a try.

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Rachel Howzell Hall’s Mist & Malice is due to be published by Thomas & Mercer in North America and in the UK, on May 19th.

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Review copy received via Edelweiss