Author Caroline Cleveland’s debut mystery novel, “When Cicadas Cry,” fooled me once, then again, then again. And maybe a few more times. Now THAT’S what I call a really good mystery. She wrote in an Afterword that she wanted to supply her readers with plenty of curves and twists. Mission accomplished. I was blindsided by almost all of them.

One of the two major plots involves the brutal murder, in a church, no less, of a beautiful young woman. A white woman. Like any good, solid, upstanding murderer, this one is awfully smart, leaving tricky clues at the murder scene that lead investigators on a wild goose chase. The villain also sets up a young Black man as the prime suspect in the crime, and the location of the murder, a church in a small South Carolina town called Walterboro, cleverly sets afire the wrath of the town’s white folk so that their inherent racism emerges enthusiastically, viciously, and entirely willingly.

Lawyer Zach Stander is the defense attorney who must figure out the identity of the real perpetrator in order to save his young client, Sam Jenkins.Jenkins called the police when, he claims, he found the murder victim, Jessica Gadsden, who had been bludgeoned to death in the most gruesome possible manner with a heavy brass cross that was the property of the church; and when the police arrived at the scene, they observed Sam leaning over the body, covered in blood with scratch marks all over his arms. Not a pretty picture, especially for Sam. He was a sitting duck.

So Zach sets about to prove Sam’s innocence, but to do so, he must, of course, find the real killer and prove that that person is the actual murderer. Zach is assisted in his mission by an old lawyer, Colleton Burns, who has volunteered for the job and who seems to know everybody in town and is familiar with all the family members of both the victim and the accused. And the third investigator is Addie Stone, Zach’s lovely and brilliant girlfriend, who has experience as a criminal investigator but is frustrated by Zach’s dependence on Colleton as his primary assistant.

So Addie decides that since she has plenty of free time, she’ll find a cold case that SHE can investigate, and when she does so, she chooses a murder case in the same location as Zach’s present case. Hers is an unsolved double murder that had occurred thirty-four years before the present-day church murder. Two young women had been murdered in one night, but the primary suspect had been proven innocent, and the case eventually fell apart. Nobody was interested in pursuing the investigation. Until Addie.

As the double plots unfold, the two cases intersect in various intersecting cross-currents; potential witnesses and suspects appear in both. Meanwhile, Colleton continues his stubborn but helpful search for clues though Addie is bitter about his involvement; Zach and Addie argue a lot; suspicions arise involving several of the characters; Sam’s trial approaches; all the white people in town want to see him convicted for his alleged sins while he continually gets viciously attacked in prison; Zach becomes an endangered pariah because he has dared to defend the Black murderer of a beautiful young white woman; Addie makes slow but impressive progress in her difficult cold case; and the reader gets pleasantly dizzy jumping from suspicion of one character to suspicion of another. The author plants numerous red herrings (Can you plant a herring? She does.) as she draws us into her web of suspicious characters and their questionable behaviors and histories.

And that is precisely the way a fine mystery novel — this one, for sure — is built. Author Caroline Cleveland has provided exactly that construction — a terrific piece that grabs us and holds on to our fascination and attention until we can finally rest comfortably in the sure knowledge that the web has been successfully untangled, and we know exactly who has committed what crimes; and, maybe even more importantly, who are the innocent victims of our own suspicions.

This review was first posted on Bookreporter.com.