Scattered Graves-Beverly Connor

Scattered Graves
Beverly Connor
Obsidian, Feb 2009, $7.99
ISBN: 0451226143

In Rosewood, Georgia, newly elected Mayor Spence Jefferies has fired experienced supervisors like the chief of police and the chief of the crime lab replacing them with political hacks. No longer working for the town as its crime lab chief, RiverTrail Museum of Natural History curator Diane Fallon has run-ins with her replacement Lloyd Bryce and his thugs. However, legally she is in the right as the crime lab is owned by the museum not the town.

As Bryce and the new police of chief Peeks lead the harassment of her, one of the cops Harve Delamore tries to kill her, but instead he dies falling from a cliff ledge. When someone kills Jefferies and Peeks apparently in retaliation by “biting” back for their nefarious activities, the townsfolk want Fallon and her former team of crime scene experts to investigate. Although she has doubts about getting involved, Diane begins to look into the homicides because the prime suspect worked for her recently at the lab and in a nasty lethal overseas incident that has left both with emotional scars.

Although why the harassment, which comes across for much of the book as childishly inane especially without legal counsel, is not explained until very late to the reader (early would have been better even if the heroine is left in the dark), this is an engaging crime caper. Someone finally had enough of the bullying tactics of the mayor, the police chief, and their hooligans; Diane worries her friend and former employee David is that someone as she fears he went over the edge with frustration. Fans will enjoy this small town Georgia thriller as Rose County becomes a killing field.

Harriet Klausner