Trust No One by Mary Burton ~ a Review

by Susan Roberts

After seventeen years away, public defender Raine Hale returns to her family’s crumbling Virginia estate when her estranged cousin Maria is hospitalized following a near-fatal cyanide poisoning. As sole beneficiary of Hale House and guardian to Maria’s five-year-old daughter, Molly, Raine confronts a troubling legacy she vowed never to revisit ― and is thrust into a deadly mystery.

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site.  A free book was provided for an honest review.

October 2026; Montlake; 978-1662530333
audio, ebook, print (413 pages); police procedural

I have loved earlier suspense books by Mary Burton, and Trust No One is no exception.  It kept me turning pages as I tried to figure out who the killer was.  There were a lot of choices, and several people fit at different times during the novel, but the surprising ending upended all of my constantly changing theories while I was reading.

Raine Hale has been away from Hale House for 17 years.  She is a public defender who decides to return home after a violent episode with a suspect.  She finds that her cousin, Maria, is in the hospital and in a coma.  A heart attack is suspected at first, but she is only in her 30s and very healthy, so further tests are done.  The main detective on the case is Judson, her first love from high school.  Raine finds Hale House, her family home, a total mess and has to decide whether to sell it or spend lots of money to make it more livable.  The entire situation with Maria is also a mess – the two cousins had been estranged for over a year, Maria’s husband was acting out of character, and their daughter Molly is with her grandmother.  Raine definitely doesn’t need to trust anyone – she is surrounded by an untrustworthy cast of characters – the man who beat her up, her soon-to-be ex-husband who is in debt and wants the money from the sale of Hale House, but is he willing to kill to get his hands on it?  Despite being a high school friend, Maria (in a coma for most of the book) doesn’t have much love for Raine during the flashbacks.  Plus, it seems like most of the characters are cheating on their spouses, and they are all interested in getting their hands on Raine’s house and money.  When it’s discovered that Maria has been poisoned, things get even more complicated.  Judson, who seems to be the only trustworthy person, tries to solve the crime while dealing with myriad suspects, all of whom were friends in high school.  Sound confusing??  Parts of it really were confusing, and at times it was difficult to wade through the confusion to figure out what was going on.

There were some definite negatives to this book – it was poorly edited, some of the timelines didn’t make sense, and there were a few things that Raine did to try to help Judson solve the crime that were well beyond what she should be doing as a public defender.  All of that said, it was still an interesting book that kept me guessing until the end, and for me that took precedence over the negatives that I mentioned.  I think it’s another great book by this author.

NOTE:  Trust No One is available for free on Amazon in September for Prime Members

Buy Trust No One at Amazon

Susan Roberts grew up in Michigan but loves the laid-back life at her home in the Piedmont area of North Carolina, where she is three hours from the beach to the east and the mountains in the west.  She reads almost anything, but her favorite genres are Southern Fiction and Historical Fiction.

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