The Sun Down Motel

I was all set to love this. The haunted, lonely motel setting really appealed to me. I also enjoyed the concept of two people working on solving the same mystery, Viv back in the 1980s (my favorite decade), and her niece Carly picking up the trail in recent times. It started out great and then got boring as heck.

This is a trite story about a serial killer with predictable twists. The ghosts are loosely tied to the main story but otherwise they don't add much other than atmosphere. I would have liked a little more haunting in this haunted motel. There wasn't much to enjoy in terms of the one-note characters either. They displayed nothing more than a surface set of personality traits. (Alma: tough, Marnie: cynical, Viv: brave, Carly: curious. Put all four together and you've almost got a real person.)

There was a lot of unnecessary repetition of information: after Viv solves part of the mystery in the '80s, we then see Carly discovering it again, resulting in plot points being restated. There had to be a better way to convey that Carly had caught up with Viv's discoveries.

The author's take on the '80s didn't ring true for me. The writers version of the 80s didn't evoke the period at all. It was also distracting that multiple characters were incredulous about the notion of a female cop. Even in the pop culture of the late '70s (and probably earlier, this is just as far as my first-hand memories go) there were female cops. I know pop culture isn't reality but it frequently reflects it and sets up what we expect to see.