Cause of Death

Jeffery Deaver is one of my favorite authors. Love the short stories like this one for a break from time to time.

If you like detective, crime, or thriller/suspense stories, you will like Deaver. This book is only 91 pages long so a good one to try if you are unsure about Jeffery Deaver. I think once you read his work, you will be hooked.

You can't beat Amazon's Read and Listen for Free either. You can seamlessly move from reading to listening without losing your place.

This story follows Jon Talbot, a history professor, in the days following his wife's death. Professor Talbot is so observant that he is almost an amateur detective, and a few things have him wondering if there might be have been something else going on that contributed to his wife's car accident...

I have enjoyed every Deaver short story that I've read so far, and this one didn't disappoint either. We get a thrilling ride, chasing down evidence through the eyes of an unusually observant historian; a solid mystery story, twists and unexpected revelations, and even a surprisingly satisfying ending. The fact that Deaver was able to pack all of this into such a short story is amazing, he is definitely one of my favorite authors. I hope he writes another story for Amazon soon.

Not sure that Cause of Death is actually a short story - it may be a short book. Anyway, whatever it is, Cause of Death is an interesting and intriguing story. It is a very written account of a husband investigating the death of his wife. And, what he learns is an unexpected surprise to him and the readers.

This is a good, quick read that is highly recommended.

I usually enjoy JDs short stories and this one was no exception. As I've come to expect of his work this brief but thrilling tale had lots of twists and turns and a "who-dun-it" that kept me guessing until the very end. Because of the stories brevity I didn't feel a deep connection to any of the characters but at the end of it I couldn't help but wonder at how well we really know the people we love. It definitely had a different feel to any of the other books I've read by Mr. Deaver but his diversity is one of the things I love best about his writing and I'm very glad I read this novella and highly recommend it... =)

Length: The kindle edition ended on page 88 and the 97% mark.

I liked it until things started happening. I read the 4-part Broken Doll series a few weeks ago and was impressed. That quartet tells different parts of the single story from four different viewpoints, and It all works. It totals about 360 pages. This novella, or novel, or short story, is about a quarter that length, and I'm not going to say "It doesn't work", but it didn't work for me. There are a couple of jarring transpositions within the story that stopped it dead. Characters appear without much preparation, and are then, just as quickly, dropped in favor of a different group of characters, without much explanation. So for me, if this is offered as a complete short story or a complete novella, it doesn't work. If, instead, it is offered as one quarter of another 4-part cluster, that's a different story. The one issue that this novella accomplishes is that it resolves the main character's confusion about what happened to his wife, but without providing enough background information to be convincing.