Sibella Giorello was no amateur when she wrote The Stones Cry Out, her first novel in this FBI Special Agent Raleigh Harmon series. She followed it with The Rivers Run Dry, and now those of you who’ve invested in this author’s enticing writing and plot lines can enjoy her latest The Clouds Roll Away.
In The Rivers Run Dry Raleigh was cast out of her home state of Virginia into the hinterlands of my home state of Washington which is where Sibella and her family now reside. After experiencing a decline in her mother’s mental state and enduring the amusing weirdness of her Aunt Charlotte while in Washington, not to mention catching the bad guy in a harrowing tale of kidnapping and high stakes gambling, Raleigh gratefully returns to Virginia. However, it’s difficult to sustain her gratitude under the command of her old boss whose objective seems bent on destroying Raleigh’s career while upgrading her own. Dispatched to an office she literally must duck into, assigned her old K-car in the dead of winter with no heater and plastic-covered seats, Raleigh is thrust into a case of cross-burning on the expansive historic and highly secured estate of smooth-talking, cello-playing, grammar-aware, celebrity rapper RPM.
In this story we’re reunited with Raleigh’s mentally fragile mother Nadine who manages to bake cookies which taste like sand and their boarder Wally who rents a room in the main house. Wally’s changed somehow while developing his photography skills and being hired by RPM, but Raleigh has little time to investigate her suspicions about him until Christmas Eve.
Delegated to a task force but limited to listening to telephone conversations with a bizarre woman who calls herself Beezus, the police detective on the case gets sick and asks Raleigh to drive his informant to a drug buy. The second time she’s called to assist with this, she leaves a swanky party in her freezing car to deliver the informant for another drug buy and winds up threatening to expose him to the drug lords for cheating in the buys. Things go terribly wrong for them, and they’re hauled into the gang leader’s house as he’s cooking up the dope.
Add to this the insinuations of a KKK hate crime, diamonds in the rough, Russians, people intersecting where no connection seems to exist, and Raleigh’s investigative radar and meddle are challenged on all levels.
Simmering, or sizzling, in the background is her old high school boyfriend, the rich and gorgeous DeMott Fielding who can’t seem to let go of this one girl, no matter how elusive she proves to be. Sibella is determined to leave romance a distant threat—er, thread—in this novel, but at least there’s a sniff of reciprocation from Raleigh when her work is finally done. I do think one minor plot point which caused a real argument between Raleigh and DeMott was left dangling, causing a question as to where the history of the visit and confrontation with these rather obscure characters fit in other than to throw a curve, but it seemed to warrant resolution.
Writing-wise, Sibella’s novels are a treasure trove of clever humor, lovely metaphors, the raw beauty of geological references, and truly creative descriptions of clouds and people quirks which reveal so much about the characters in a tight but beautiful prose. That crystalline moment when Sibella slips the meaning of the title into the story is priceless.
If you’re prone to love scintillating writing shaped around a good mystery, The Clouds Roll Away won’t disappoint you. Another quick and well-written read from Sibella Giorello.
To read my reviews of the two previous novels in this series, you can go here:
http://http://hopeofglory.typepad.com/into_the_fire/2008/10/if-we-dont-the.html
And here:
Father, you know Sibella’s passionate heart after you. Please continue to direct and order her steps, blessing her efforts to glorify you in her writing and all that she does. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
Into the Fire 
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