Title & Author:  The Dead Key, D. M. Pulley

Publication Date & Publisher:  March 1, 2015, Thomas & Mercer

Genre(s): Mystery/Thriller, Suspense

My Rating: 4.5/5.0

Amazon Purchase Link: The Dead Key

Description (from Goodreads):

It’s 1998, and for years the old First Bank of Cleveland has sat abandoned, perfectly preserved, its secrets only speculated on by the outside world.

Twenty years before, amid strange staff disappearances and allegations of fraud, panicked investors sold Cleveland’s largest bank in the middle of the night, locking out customers and employees, and thwarting a looming federal investigation. In the confusion that followed, the keys to the vault’s safe-deposit boxes were lost.

In the years since, Cleveland’s wealthy businessmen kept the truth buried in the abandoned high-rise. The ransacked offices and forgotten safe-deposit boxes remain locked in time, until young engineer Iris Latch stumbles upon them during a renovation survey. What begins as a welcome break from her cubicle becomes an obsession as Iris unravels the bank’s sordid past. With each haunting revelation, Iris follows the looming shadow of the past deeper into the vault—and soon realizes that the key to the mystery comes at an astonishing price.

My review:

First of all, I think I may have found a new favorite mystery/suspense author!

I bought The Dead Key at the West Virginia Writers summer conference last month, after attending a session by the author, D.M. Pulley. During the class, she referenced The Dead Key a few times and the more she talked about it the more I wanted to read it. (To be honest, it was distracting…I found myself trying to pay attention, but just wanted to go read the book she kept talking about.)

If you’ve read any of my other book reviews, then you know that I’m often drawn into a book by its characters. I really am a sucker for a character-driven story and will often enjoy a book even if the writing or story isn’t that great, if I’m in love with the people in it.

What you probably haven’t realized yet (or maybe you have if you’ve been paying close attention), is that I hardly ever read mysteries anymore. I hate being let down by guessing every single plot twist before it happens, figuring out who did what when and why way before the author tells me… basically, I hate feeling smarter than the hero or heroine. The point of a good mystery is to keep you wondering what the heck is going on and/or going to happen until the very end (Where I expect for everything to be wrapped up in a pretty little bow for me).

I’ve been let down too often over the last couple years… I gave up on mystery authors all together.

Until now…

Not only did I love the characters in The Dead Key, but I had to force myself to put the book down… I desperately needed to know what was going to happen next!

The story goes back and forth between a young girl’s experiences at the First Bank of Cleveland in 1978 and a female engineer, Iris, in 1998.

Iris is trying to do a renovation survey on the bank, which has been frozen in time for the last 20 years. It’s so strange, that she begins to snoop around more and more…and get herself into more and more trouble as she digs into the past.

One part of the past she digs up on the bank is that of Beatrice, a young secretary that had worked at the bank. It’s obvious that Beatrice has a lot of secrets and while Iris herself doesn’t discover all of them, D. M. Pulley lets you experience it yourself as you go through Beatrice’s sad and terrifying journey with her.

I love a good serious story with a lot of laughs and Iris provided plenty of both! She’s nothing like what you’d expect an engineer to be. She drinks too much, smokes too much, and makes bad decision after hilariously bad decision after another. At one point, she starts to believe she may be imagining things:

She had to stop drinking and get some sleep. It was getting hard to separate her memories from her delusions.

On page 292, I realized that I still had no idea what supporting characters to trust and which were dangerous for Beatrice and Iris…and I was shocked by who was friend and who was foe at the end!

There is so much I want to tell you, but almost anything more would be a spoiler so if you’ve already read The Dead Key, let me know what you thought! I love talking about great books!

If you don’t have an interest in reading it, why? If you’re planning on adding it to your TBR stack, was my review helpful?

Thanks for reading my review and happy reading!