Story for the Week
When shopping for a camera, megapixels (MP) make for a key selling point. Heck, people will upgrade their cell phones based on a better camera. My current iPhone‘s camera system boasts 48MP. My brother-in-law owns a Samsung with a whopping 64MP telephoto lens. When my husband Dennis passed just over five years ago, he was proud of the pictures he could take with his iPhone X and its 12MP camera. 🤭
Cell phone camera systems have obviously come a long way in the last five years, but how much is too much? Does the average cell phone user need a camera that powerful?
Dennis thought of himself as an amateur photographer. OK, most of the time, I think he thought he was a professional photographer. He was never without a camera when we went on vacation or to family or school events. In fact, on our first trip to Disneyworld together, he took more than 500 pictures the first day at Magic Kingdom. 😲 The upside is that we have a ton of family photos. The downside is that we invested a lot of money into cameras and lenses we haven’t used in a very long time.
Dennis first made the switch from film to DSLR in 2006 with the release of the Nikon D40. As was Dennis’s personality, he did a ton of research because he couldn’t decide between a Nikon or a Canon. He called a friend who worked as a photographer and asked his opinion. He had both brands, but he recommended the Nikon for Dennis as an amateur user. At the time, the 6.1MP camera was impressive. When Nikon released the D40X in 2007 with a 10.2MP camera, Dennis traded up because…well, because.
A year later, with the release of the D60 and its 10.2MP, Dennis had to trade up again. And when Nikon released a special Gold Edition…well, you can see where this is going. When he upgraded the first few times, he traded in the older camera. With the D60, he still had a ton of pictures on the original camera, and the Gold Edition was on sale. He promised he would sell the original D60 once he cleared the pictures, Seventeen years later, we still own both of them.
The same year the D40 came out, Apple released the iPhone with a 2MP camera. The 3GS bumped to 3MP. While the 4 moved up to 5MP, the 4S bumped up to 8MP. The next change was the 6S with 12MP in 2015. In eight years, Apple created a cell phone with a better camera than our Nikon. By that time, however, Dennis had invested so much money in lenses that I wouldn’t let him upgrade the DSLR.
You can do so much with a cell phone camera now, especially if you know what you’re doing. But they’re still not going to be able to do nearly as much as a top-of-the-line DSLR. And Nikon is definitely still top-of-the-line.
We probably won’t ever buy another DSLR camera. I’m not a professional photographer. I take pictures of Corinne and the dogs. We capture vacation memories. I snap photos of labels so I can blow them up to actually read them. 👀
One of the characters in the book below owns both a Nikon and a Canon. The reference immediately made me think of Dennis’s internal debate over which would be better to buy. Thank goodness he called someone to ask, or I fear we would have ended up with both. 🤦🏼♀️ At least Izzy is a professional. Dennis only thought he was. 😉
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐½
3.5 Stars for Innocence Road by Laura Griffin
360 pages
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: November 11, 2025
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Berkley.
Publisher’s Description
Detective Leanne Everhart swore she’d never go back to her hometown near Marfa, Texas—but she returns when her brother needs her, only to find a town in need too, still torn apart by a decades-old crime.
Leanne Everhart knows women have something to fear in her artsy hometown, especially so if they’re not rich, white locals. Returning to town after her father’s death, she sees the ugliest sides of an area that draws people for its severe, untamed natural landscape.
While her department faces mounting backlash over a recent wrongful conviction in the long-ago murder case of a popular local teenager—which is now unsolved—Leanne is called to a fresh crime scene at the edge of the desert. A nameless woman was found murdered, with no clues as to her identity. As Leanne digs into the crime scene evidence, she grows convinced this latest murder case is linked with the local teenager’s murder. And to multiple cold cases, all unnamed female victims, that have all been shelved by her department without leads.
Now, with conflicted loyalties and without allies, Leanne must hunt down a serial killer, one who’s been preying on local women for two decades, growing bolder and more ruthless with every strike.
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Main Characters:
- Leanne Everheart – a senior detective for the Madrone Police Department near Marfa, Texas; started out in Dallas for eight years before returning home to Madrone after her father died; promised to always take care of her brother who is a newly recovering addict; her father had been a popular detective in Madrone on an extremely high-profile murder case
- Josh Cooper – another senior detective in Madrone, seems to watch out for Leanne and gets along with the Chief better
- Izzy Huerta – first-year CSI specializing in forensic photography in Madrone, has a passion for nature photography, earned a degree from NYU before being drawn back to Madrone for her family
- Jim McBride – Chief of Police in Madrone, worked with Leanne’s dad, was the lead detective 16 years ago when 18-year-old Hannah Rawls was murdered
- Sean Moriarty – convicted for the murder of Hannah Rawls, just released from prison because of new DNA evidence that overturned his conviction
- Duncan Harper – started his law enforcement career in Dallas where he worked with Leanne, works as a detective with the Chisos County Sheriff’s Office where he believes he can move up the ranks more quickly than he could in Dallas
- Sam Carver – worked with Leanne in the Dallas Police Department, left four years ago for a career with the FBI and the ultimate goal of joining the Behavioral Analysis Unit, currently works in El Paso where she moved with her special agent husband
When Detective Leanne Everheart gets called in to investigate a dead body in the Texas desert, little does she know that her life is about to blow up. When she returns to the office, Chief Jim McBride makes her the lead on the case and drops another bomb. Sean Moriarty, convicted 15 years ago, was released, his sentence vacated due to new evidence. There are a lot of eyes on the small town of Madrone and a lot of pressure to close this new case quickly.
Leanne puts a lot of pressure on herself. She returned to Madrone from Dallas because her father asked her to keep an eye on her brother because his head is always in the clouds. Her brother grew into a drug habit. Even though she recognizes that he is a full-grown adult, Leanne feels responsible for him. As the only female in the department with a badge, Leanne also feels the pressure to live up to her male peers as well as her father’s legacy.
Griffin is a prolific author, but this is my first of her titles. I really liked Leanne as a character. A strong female in a male-dominated field, she would make a great series character. She lives as a bit of a loner, relying on a very small group of people she considers friends. She keeps most people at arm’s length, but a part of her craves female friendship.
The female owner of a campground leaves Leanne meals when she works a lot, and Leanne considers Izzy one of her only friends. When she wants to dig more into a case, Leanne leverages her friendship with Sam and her connections in Quantico. Leanne is dedicated to law enforcement and devoted to her family, even when they disappoint her.
The story here is solid. Leanne portrays a dogged investigator despite the pushback and pressure she receives from supervisors and colleagues. As the details unfold, we learn that there is a lot more to what Leanne is investigating than we anticipated. A variety of suspects abound, which always makes for a better thriller. As a fan of Criminal Minds, I love the tie-in to the BAU.
That said, I feel like the pacing could be better. The story builds pretty slowly without a ton of tension and no real sense of urgency. It didn’t have me flipping pages as fast as I could to get through it, which is something I crave in a thriller. There wasn’t a lot of action. But it wasn’t a bad story, and I had guesses about the killer, but I was still surprised at the end, which is why I rated it 3.5 stars.
I would probably read another Laura Griffin book. I would definitely read another one featuring Leanne Everheart, so I hope Griffin decides to make her a series lead character. The end of the book left the possibility open, so fingers crossed.
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