Edge of Dusk is book one in the Annie Pederson Series by Colleen Coble. Colleen Coble is a multi award winning author and has achieved best seller status on numerous lists, including Amazon and USA Today.

Annie Pederson’s life is turned upside down the night her sister is taken and Annie is left for dead. The disappearance has never been solved and is never far from Annies mind 24 years later. Tragedy didn’t end there, as Annie faces life alone with her young daughter after losing her husband and parents in a tragic accident. Annie, a law enforcement ranger, finds herself investigating a murder and a cold case comes back to haunt Rock Harbor.

Dr. Jon Dustan returns home after many years away. Questioning the life he has built for himself, he hopes to wrap up loose ends in a town where many are suspicious of his connection to two women that went missing nine years prior.

Although Annie would like to avoid the man who once held her heart, Jon has valuable information that could be the break they have been looking for.

There are many things I enjoyed about the novel and fans of hers will enjoy characters from other series making an appearance. I do however have a few critiques. Perhaps it is just me but I often find suspense and crime novels frustrating in their abundance of plot holes. I can see how these could be easy for an author to miss if you are caught up in the story. However, it does make me wonder how an editor missed them.

Plot holes slow a story down and Edge of Dusk seems to have more than average. Here are just a few examples.

• It is established Jon has a satellite phone and he can make calls outside of regular service areas. Days later his phone no longer has that ability.
• Annie sprains her ankle so bad the doctor puts her in a boot. Days later she is walking without the boot and has no issues getting around. If only sprains were that short in real life!
• Home repairs that go faster than the speed of light. This part had me questioning the entire timeline of the story and I thought I must have missed something. Nope.
• You have to have some kind of nose to smell the SOAP of someone who was in your home. Cologne maybe, but soap? Better yet, the ability to smell that same soap outside in the middle of a massive storm, in a boat on Lake Superior. But not when you’re walking next to him? Doubtful.

I wish these inconsistencies would have been edited out. While they aren’t plot holes that change the arc of the story, they are enough to pull you out of the moment to question if your mental timeline is off.

She did a decent job of smoke and mirrors, and I didn’t immediately figure out who was behind the murder. The characters had more than a superficial faith, something that is all too common in Christian fiction it seems. It was refreshing to have characters whose convictions matched the faith they claimed.

Colleen Coble is a talented writer, as is evident by her numerous awards. Crime and suspense novels are a smaller genre in Christian fiction and her contributions are most welcome.

If you have a Christian suspense or crime novel you would like me to read and review, please drop me an email or a comment below. I would love to hear from you.