Sunday, March 15, 2015

What The Fly Saw - Frankie Y. Bailey

What The Fly Saw
Frankie Y. Bailey
Minotaur Books, Mar 3 2015, $25.99
ISBN: 9781250048301

In 2020 Albany, New York, as a snow storm rocks the city an unknown archer shoots an arrow that kills funeral director Kevin Novak in the funeral parlor he runs.  Leading the murder investigation, APD Detectives Hannah McCabe and Mike Baxter learn from Kevin’s family that he grieved the death of his BFF and feared Luanne Woodward the psychic though they do not know why.  The minister, a shrink and congregation of the church the deceased attended avoid directly answering the detectives’ questions.  Still the two cops fail to find even one slightly possible suspect with a viable motive as the innocuous victim seems to have had no enemies nor caused the tiniest confrontational ripple. 

More deaths follow, complicating the case.  Meanwhile Medium Olive Cooper hosts a séance attended by McCabe, Baxter and Novak’s family and friends.  Not long after a stunned McCabe realizes a new death ties the Novak homicide to another murder inquiry she is struggling to solve (see The Red Queen Dies).

The second Detective Hannah McCabe near future and alternate Albany police procedural is an engaging whodunit though the background seems more like 2015 in the New York State capital than a few years from now in a similar but parallel word.  Still the exhilarating murder mystery entertains fans as the marvelous protagonist struggles with this case, her previous case and her family; not in that order. 


Harriet Klausner

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