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High hopes come with EVERY LAST SECRET, a debut novel which has won the Malice Domestic Best Traditional Mystery Competition. The mystery features Marquitta "Skeet" Bannion, a half-Cherokee police detective who has left a high-pressure job in Kansas City to become chief of campus police at Brewster, Missouri, a small college town twelve miles away. Six months into her new job, the college newspaper editor, an older student with a wife and stepson, is murdered in his office. There are plenty of suspects. Andrew McAfee had a heated fight with his news editor, he had been accused of sexually assaulting a female student, and was facing allegations of theft and blackmail. As Bannion investigates, the list of suspects grows – and so do the murders. Rodriguez's first novel is very readable, although it has some of the hallmarks of a first-time novelist: the beginning of the book is populated with so many characters you'll need a scoresheet. And Rodriguez doesn't really plumb Bannion's character or heritage; the few mentions give us very brief glimpses into those. The novel's tension also comes a bit late, in the last chapters. However, Rodriguez does have a fluid writing style, and Skeet Bannion is someone any reader can get behind. Like the heroines of Nevada Barr and Dana Cameron, she is no-nonsense: "I put on my Homicide loafers. No time for high heels. I had a killer to catch," she says at one point. The characters that surround her are likable and well-drawn, and Rodriguez sets up a couple of romantic possibilities that are left unresolved. The ending leaves the possibility of a series, and Rodriguez may easily hook you with her cast of characters. Hopefully, subsequent books will draw us even more into these characters' lives. § Lourdes Venard is a newspaper editor in Long Island, N.Y.
Reviewed by Lourdes Venard, April 2012
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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