“Adam’s Witness” by J.C. Paulson

What a delightful blend of crime and romance! It was my first thought when I was halfway through reading “Adam’s Witness” by J.C. Paulson. To be honest, I don’t read true-to-genre crime novels, because there isn’t anything much in them except searching for the murderer. And I’m also not drawn to “strictly” romance novels. That being said, I do love reading about love and relationships, and without these themes, a story usually seems too bland to me.

The Canadian town of Saskatoon is shocked by an audacious murder. Although Saskatoon isn’t a small place, it is still far from being a metropolis. Murders don’t happen every day here. As if it wasn’t enough to make the public shudder, the victim is a bishop – respected and even loved by his parish.

Detective Sergeant Adam Davis is good at his job, and it doesn’t take him long to find the threads that would lead him to the culprit. He gets misled at first by the conflicting witnesses’ testimonies and some of them deliberately hiding the truth. Those things happen often, and they aren’t what unexpectedly threatened to sabotage Adam’s investigation. It’s feelings a key witness has evoked in him the moment he saw her on the crime scene.

I loved the way the author portrayed Grace. She is strong and fragile at the same time. She isn’t that kind of grotesque image of an “independent woman” who is like a rock without a single weak bone in her soul and body. She is also smart and professional in her job. She is a reporter in the local newspaper, and that’s the reason why she happened to be the one who found the dead bishop.

The investigation was exciting to follow with false leads and seemingly obvious suspects. Similarly intriguing was the love story plotline, with both main characters gradually revealing the secrets from their pasts to the reader.

In the book, the author touches upon important topics of tolerance, acceptance, and some people’s inability to see their own mistakes as reasons for their failures. Such people never see that they need to change their own attitude and not the things they believe are wrong in the world.

I’m curious about what awaits Adam and Grace in their professional and personal lives, so I’ll definitely read the next books in the series.