Gail Lukasik Destroying Angels

Destroying Angels

Gail Lukasik

Five Star, Mar 2006, $25.95, 296 pp.

ISBN: 1594143609

After fifteen years of marriage and teaching in Chicago, Leah Gerard leaves behind her spouse, job, and home in Libertyville to relocate to Egg Harbor, Wisconsin, following a mastectomy in which her hubby was more concerned with plastic surgery than her health. In Egg Harbor, Leah obtains a job with the Door County Gazette. Editor in Chief Jake Stevens assigns Leah to write a column on recently deceased artisan carpenter Carl Peck, a standard practice of the paper to do an article on the recently deceased.

Leah interviews Carl's wife Eva, only to learn she is suing Dr. Porter and Bay Hospital for wrongful death and negligence, before the widow's daughter Sarah tosses her out. Leah talks with Dr. Porter, who is shocked by the suit, as he insists his patient died from a heart attack brought on by a failed liver. Still she keeps digging and soon finds a link to a two decade old murder, making Leah wonder bad liver, bad heart or possible homicide.

Though a paid reporter, Leah's lack of investigative experience makes this fine mystery more an amateur sleuth tale, as the intrepid journalist learns her trade on the job. The cast is fascinating because of their different reactions to Leah's enquiries into the death of Carl. Gaul Lukasik provides an exciting, exhilarating and enjoyable who-done-it, that at first only Leah considers a possible murder disguised as a heart attack, though the medical examiner and police quickly join her bandwagon.