"Fun amateur sleuth tale"

In Fort Collins, Colorado Shamrock Realty realtor Kate Doyle detests having to sell the home of friends, attorney Mark and Amanda Schuster, who have filed for divorce. Mark wants to get rid of their joint house as soon as possible while Amanda wants the most money they can obtain. Kate works documents with Mark and promises to finish up later that day once she obtains Amanda's signature.

When Kate returns to see Mark, she is horrified to find him dead with a letter opener stuck through his throat. The police assume a crime of passion occurred; thus Amanda is the prime suspect as a rejected wife. Kate thinks otherwise and begins to investigate the activities of a lawyer she thought she knew as a friend. Instead she finds he had several affairs and pulled a land development ploy that angered perspective contractors. Unlike the local cops, Kate has a long list of suspects.

Although readers will doubt Kate would investigate especially since the corpse shook her to her bone marrow in spite of her best friend as the prime suspect, fans will be pleased with this fun amateur sleuth tale. Kate is shocked when she begins to see a radically different picture of someone she thought she knew merge as she finds Mark was a womanizer and applied questionable business ethics to transactions. The revelations come on top of thinking that Mark and Amanda were the poster couple for marriage before they ask her to sell their house as part of their divorce settlement. Maggie Sefton provides a wonderful who-done-it starring a shell-shocked layperson risking her life to prove her pal is innocent.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted September 15, 2005