About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

DEATH NOTICE
by Todd Ritter
St Martin's Minotaur, October 2010
326 pages
$24.99
ISBN: 0312622805


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Perry Hollow, PA is a small town with the usual small town crimes. When a coffin is found on the side of the road, a coffin containing the corpse of George Winnick, it is the first murder in Perry Hollow that anyone can remember. Chief Kat Campbell is not happy that it happened on her watch. The fact that the corpse was mutilated doesn't help matters. Neither does find out that Henry Goll received a death notice (not the same as an obituary) about George before George died. Still, everyone hopes that it's just some weirdo passing through.

The state boys show up because the mutilations on George's body mimic those on other bodies, the work of the "Betsy Ross Killer." While Kat is unhappy about having to deal with the state police, she knows she is totally out of her depth here, and needs all the help she can get. Nick Donnelly doesn't want to antagonize her; he just wants to find the killer. They decide they can work together without too much trouble.

Work they do. There are more murders. It becomes quite obvious that it is not some transient. It has to be somebody in town, somebody that most people know. Somebody passing for sane. How scary is that?

DEATH NOTICE is Ritter's first novel. It's good. Kat Campbell does the juggling that any single mother knows must be done. She worries that her son is suffering in some way because of the demands of her job. But there is more to this book than Kat. Goll has a back story of his own, an interesting one. So does Nick Donnelly. The plot is multi-layered, just as the characters are. Ritter captures the charm of Perry Hollow, which is substantial for Kat and Henry. He takes the reader, as well as the detectives, down one false but theoretically possible wrong trail after another. As the detectives get closer to the truth, the tension for the reader increases. This is an impressive first novel.

§ P.J. Coldren lives in northern lower Michigan where she reads and reviews widely across the mystery genre when she isn't working in her local hospital pharmacy.

Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, March 2011

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]