Review: One was a Soldier by Julia Spencer-Fleming

 One Was A Soldier

Author: Julia Spencer-Fleming
Format: Minotaur Books (2011), ARC, 336 pages
Characters:Russ Van Alstyne, Clare Fergusson
Subject: soldiers returning from war, murder, theft
Setting: fictional town of Millers Kill NY
Series: Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne mysteries
Genre: mystery- police procedural/amateur sleuth; romance
Source: ARC from the Early Reviewer program on LibraryThing.com

She's done it again!  Julia Spencer-Fleming just gets better and better. This is the seventh in the series, and the town of Millers Kill NY is beginning to feel like a hometown.  We thought we knew everyone, but here, as Rev (Major) Clare Fergusson finally returns home after her tour as a helicopter pilot in Iraq, we are introduced to several of her fellow veterans, each of whom has some serious impairment from service - either PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury, physical impairment or some combination of all of them.  Depression, alcoholism, anger management, flashbacks, drug addiction ---these are some of the problems that send several of them, Clare included,  to veteran's group therapy sessions. While discussing their problems, they become involved in solving a mystery, and Clare, in her usual 'damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead' manner again finds herself butting heads with police chief (and fiancé) Russ Van Alstyne, elevating the already steamy sexual tension between the two.

Spencer-Fleming is at her best here with an elegant, poignant, anguish-filled character study of the group participants, with her believable plot that gives us many twists and keeps us guessing, and with a romance that we thought was going to culminate in this volume (we've been waiting for years).  Everything-- characters, plot, scene setting, and romance combine to make an incredible and enjoyable page turner.  I only wanted to see how it started, but ended up putting aside two other books I was reading to follow this one from page 1 to the end.

Readers who are new to the series can read this one without having to read the previous ones - there is just enough back-fill to make it enjoyable, but fans of the series, who have followed this friendship/romance from the beginning, will find it truly rewarding.

I will not do spoilers--the group works together to try to overcome the mental and physical wounds they all are suffering, they become involved in "helping" the police determine if a murder has been commited and if so who did it, and they become involved in uncovering a huge Army boondoggle.  Oh yeah.....and Clare and Russ march toward the altar.  Do they finally get married?  I won't tell, and  I certainly won't give away a very surprising ending that left me screaming   "NO YOU CAN"T STOP HERE!"

I love Julia Spencer-Fleming, but I'm almost upset ---now I have to wait for the next installment.  And it had better be soon!