The Socorro Blast

by: Pari Noskin Taichert

Published by: University of New Mexico Press

Reviewed by Julie Failla Earhart

While writers are encouraged to write about what they know, it doesn’t always work. Pari Noskin Taichert’s protagonist, Sasha Solomon is a freelance public relations specialist. This secondary plot line gets in the way of what could be a great read in Noskin Taichert’s third Sasha Solomon mystery, The Socorro Blast.

Sasha’s niece, Gabriela Shofet, is the picture of pure innocence, lying in her hospital bad, after her hand is almost blown off when someone put a bomb in her mailbox. Sasha soon learns, however, that appearances are deceiving. Gabi is involved with a married man and experimenting with new explosion technologies. Not only that, Sasha can’t get the right answers from the dreary Detective Sanchez. She feels like he’s holding back–and it’s something very important.

To make matters worse, Sasha is juggling more than Gabi’s accident. Sasha is also trying to conduct a PR plan for the region and keep her freelance income going strong, in the midst of breaking up with her boyfriend, Peter, and bracing for the arrival of Gabi’s sister and mother, who are about as low key as Sasha. Things get even worse when Sasha visits Gabi’s shabby home and finds it defaced with graffiti. Still, the police won’t talk, so Sasha feels she must move in and use her amateur sleuthing skills to find out exactly what’s going happening.

Unlike Noskin Taichert’s other two books, The Socorro Blast, moves from cozy to suspense, tilting on the edge of the thriller. Like the first two books, there is too much going on. The use of PR as a vehicle to move Sasha around New Mexico didn’t work for me. Neither did the carefully worked metaphors and similes. Noskin Taichert left not a one that didn’t feel “labored over.”

Although The Socorro Blast is a stand-alone novel, it relies too heavily on information that I have forgotten about from the first two novels. If the PR plot goes away, I might consider picking up future Sasha Solomon mysteries, but truth be told, these problems mean I might review a free book, but would never buy them.

Armchair Interview says: Consider this reviewer’s comments.

Author’s Web site: http://www.PariNoskinTaichert.com