Nancy Mehl is a well-known name in the Christian fiction industry, but one that I’d never gotten around to sampling. I’m not going to make a final judgment based on one book, but if all her work is similar to Dead Fall then I’m going to graciously pass. The story revolves around a team of BAU agents and their attempt to catch an UNSUB who is forcing fellow BAU agents to commit suicide. The agents hole up at Quantico for safety but, even then, they find themselves dying off one by one and if only they good do a better profile they might be able to catch the killer. 

 

If you wanted a kitschy mystery trope, Dead Fall has plenty of them. Cut the red wire or the blue wire? Better cut the red wire. Everyone knows that’s usually the one that sets the bomb off, but if everybody knows it than smart killers will obviously switch the wires so that cutting the blue wire sets it off. So cut the red wire. How did the killer get a bomb into the FBI Academy? Eh. Doesn’t matter. Who is the killer? Maybe it’s the guy who was a suspect until he was killed, expect his was the one body never found. Mehl has basically rewritten the Agatha Christie classic And Then There Were None for the modern age except worse. 

 

Every villain has to have a tragic backstory. The killer’s inside help are doing it for the money—one because their kid is a drug addict and she wants to move away from an area of bad influence and another because their wife has a gambling addiction and lost their kids’ college funds. It’s melodramatic bordering on parody. Dead Fall’s relatively large cast means that no single person—not even the main protagonist—stands out. All the characters have the same feel to them; no one is distinct. Further, while Christianity is to be expected within a Christian novel, Mehl lays it on thick and heavy—and in ways that come across as speaking to the reader rather than as part of the story. It comes across as inauthentic and detracts from the story. 

 

Looking at other reviews, I’m in a clear minority. Other people may be a fan but I just don’t see it.