Review – Snapshot

From the inside jacket flap:  Two little girls, frozen in black and white. One picture worth killing for.

The Civil Rights Movement is less than a distant memory to Lisa Waldren—it is someone else’s memory altogether, passed on to her through the pages of history. Her life as a federal prosecutor in Boston feels utterly remote from the marches in the South that changed her father’s generation—and the entire nation—forever.

But the truth is, she was there.

When a photograph surfaces showing a blond, four-year-old Lisa playing with an African-American girl at a civil rights march in Fort Worth, Lisa is faced with a jarring revelation: the girls may have been the only witnesses who observed the killer of civil rights leader Benjamin Gray . . . and therefore the only ones who can exonerate the death row inmate falsely accused of the murder.

Soon, Lisa finds herself in the dangerous world her father had shielded her from as a child. After some searching, the Waldrens find the other little girl from the photo and, in the process, uncover conspiracy mere steps away from the likes of Bobby Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and J. Edgar Hoover.

Based on real events and a photograph snapped by author Lis Wiehl’s own G-man father, Snapshot is a remarkably original marriage of mystery and history.

Take a FBI agent and a federal prosecutor who just happen to be father and daughter, add in a case from over 40 years ago that, if they don’t solve, an innocent man is going to the death chamber for and you have a formula for action and excitement.  Ms. Wiehl has outdone herself here.  The hunt for the killer who does not wish to be discovered means the killer will strike again.  The father/daughter duo have their own issues to resolve and then there is the issue of race relations and trust.  “Snapshot” is an excellent murder mystery filled with marvelous characters, great plot twists, suspense and thrills.   This is an exciting book, extremely well paced and suspenseful.