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CONSIGNED TO DEATH
by Jane K. Cleland
St Martin's Minotaur, April 2006
288 pages
$23.95
ISBN: 0312347251


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Josie Prescott is having a hectic day, multi-tasking the various parts of her burgeoning antiques business. There is the Wilson collection to arrange for an auction. There is the tag sale to organize and set up. There are the usual paperwork and customer service issues to be dealt with. Which means the unexpected arrival of Chief Alvarez throws a major monkey wrench into the works.

Alvarez wants to know about her visit to Nathaniel Grant's house that morning. Josie tells him she went out there to discuss the sale of his collection, but he didn't seem to be home. She is devastated to find out that not only is he dead, murdered, but also it happened right around the time she was standing out on the porch wondering what was going on. Not a good start to a day.

It gets worse. Guess whose fingerprints are on the knife used to stab Mr. Grant? You got it. Josie's. She has a reasonable explanation, but there is at least one viable motive.

Josie has some past. She was the sole whistle-blower in a well-publicized price-fixing scandal at a major firm, which pretty much blew her career on the West Coast. She relocated to New Hampshire, and is finally getting comfortable with how her new business is doing. She knows that the competition is keen, and sometimes cut-throat, but doesn't expect some of the backstabbing that she encounters while investigating (on her own) the murder of Mr Grant.

Josie has some assistants in her investigations. She cuts a deal with a local reporter, who has access to information she can't get any other way. This obligates her to an exclusive, but it's a deal she can live with. Her lawyer is far more supportive, at least in terms of time and access, than one might expect from that profession. He's a great lawyer and a very good friend. Josie also has a knack for utilizing her support staff at work to great advantage; she asks the right questions of the right people.

Making her life even more complex is the definite and totally inappropriate mutual attraction between Alvarez and Josie. He has the good sense to tell her that they can't be involved while he is working the case, but all the signs are there for an extended romance once Josie finds the killer.

CONSIGNED TO DEATH is a very good first novel. The characters, even the seemingly minor ones, are believable and interesting. The settings, both big and small (New Hampshire, antiques business), play an important part in the telling of the story. There is certainly plenty of potential for a long-running series; if Cleland continues to be write as well as she has in CONSIGNED TO DEATH, readers are in for a treat.

Reviewed by P. J. Coldren, April 2006

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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