Review: Miracle Creek

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There is always so much more than meets the eye in any family drama or tragedy. But, Miracle Creek is not your typical tragedy. Nor is it your typical whodunit. With unusual elements like occupied hyperbaric chambers exploding in the residential garage of a Korean immigrant family, the conflagration takes on a weirdly alluring form.

Angie Kim does a great job creating the individual streets of insidious intent in each of the suspects and she keeps the culprits and the motives in the shadows until the end. She does an especially good job capturing the tug-of-war in the heart of every parent with a disabled or autistic child ... the desperation which sometimes overcomes the hope; the hope which sometimes overcomes the desperation.

I did find myself impatient for evidence which went beyond a casual conversation or the placement of a pack of cigarettes, for example. But the author's slow reveals of sad little mistakes that the main players made - the kinds of mistakes to which all readers can relate - kept my eyes moving from page to page.

It is perhaps the most peculiar setting for a whodunit story but this is also what pulls the reader in at once.

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