Pub Date: March 13, 2018
Publisher: Minotaur (St. Martin's)
Length: 353 pages
POV: 3rd, past
FTC: Review copy courtesy of the publisher
After two recent mysteries fell a little flat for me, it was a bit refreshing to see some solid characterization and emotion again. I'm primarily a romance reader, although I've always read mysteries and urban fantasy, too. I tend to gravitate towards the books that show rather than tell. Those that grip you by your emotions. This book is one of the good ones.
This is Daugherty's first adult book, having previously written YA under a different name. You couldn't tell if you hadn't read the author's bio. She does an excellent job with the grit and gore of two messy crime scenes without playing up the shock factor. I appreciated that. Enough detail to get the point, without wallowing in the carnage.
Harper McClain is a a local crime reporter in Savannah. She listens to the scanner and spends her nights chasing down crime scenes and hoping for a page one story. What most of her friends and colleagues don't know is that her mother was murdered over a decade ago, and she was the one to find the body. The emotional scars and inevitable fallout of the murder both fuel her passion for covering crime, and make her leery of forming close attachments. Until a similar murder happens on her beat.
