When Cicadas Cry by Caroline Cleveland

Union Square & Co, 2024

ISBN 978-1-4549-5231-2

ISBN 978-1-4549-5232-9  (e-book)

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy:  Amazon.com | Bookshop.org

When Cicadas Cry by Caroline Cleveland is an engaging murder mystery.

A beautiful, young, white woman is bludgeoned to death in rural South Carolina church. A young black accountant, covered in blood, crouches over her. In the eyes of the prosecutor and most of the whites in the town, the young man’s guilt is clear. A disgraced lawyer reluctantly agrees to defend the young man in what seems like a lost cause. But he must also deal with ra town torn by racial tensions.

Thirty-four years earlier, two teenage girls were murdered in the same town. Their case was never solved. As a novel approach, the author weaves the first-person voice of the true killer into the plot. The reader is challenged to identify the killer among the novel’s many characters.

The author, being a practicing lawyer, weaves interesting insights about lawyerly thinking and courtroom procedures into her story. The novel’s style and plot twists will remind readers of mysteries by other lawyer-novelists, such as John Grisham.

Recommended: young adults

Contains: gore, mild sex

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee