Book Review: Justice Delayed by Patricia Bradley

Sandra Ardoin @SandraArdoin

The first book in Patricia Bradley’s new series, Memphis Cold Case, is out. Justice Delayed is the perfect title for this story about those seeking to free a man on death row days before his scheduled execution.

Eighteen years earlier, Andi Hollister’s sister, Stephanie, was murdered and the convicted killer, Stephanie’s ex-boyfriend, sits in prison waiting to be executed. Andi is perfectly fine with it until an old friend of her sister dies and a letter the woman wrote surfaces. 

Will Kincade is the best friend of Andi’s brother and the cousin of the man set to pay for Stephanie’s murder. He’s also in love with Andi. Newly promoted to the Memphis PD Cold Case Unit, the letter prompts Will to work on his cousin’s case. And he only has days to prove the man’s innocence.

Overall, I really enjoyed the fast pace and interesting premise of this novel. The latter being the urgency to find a killer before an innocent man dies. I also found the twist in the whodunit to be fun. I will give Justice Delayed four stars online for those reasons, however, I had a couple of issues that will keep me from rating it five stars.

First, maybe it was me, but I found the heroine a tad annoying and immature. She’s thirty or thirty-one, but from some of her actions and attitudes, I kept seeing in my mind a much younger woman.

Second, I didn’t care for the abrupt ending. I won’t discuss it in detail. I’ll simply say the build-up to the climax really stressed the heroine’s physical issue, but she sailed through that portion with no more problem or reference to it. Then the novel suddenly ended with an HEA but no resolution to her issue. To be fair, I read an advanced reader copy,  so perhaps this is an ongoing situation in the next book(s). But without a continuing story being alluded to, it created a sense of disbelief in me and a feeling that the word count ran out, so the story was over. 

Otherwise, it was a compelling romantic suspense, leaving the reader eager to learn the truth and see the guilty punished.