Jennifer Sturman, The Key

The Key

Jennifer Sturman

Red Dress Ink, December 2006, $13.95

ISBN 0373896034

In Manhattan, Rachel Benjamin feels her chances of making partner at Winslow Brown Investment Bank remains excellent, in spite of her obnoxious demanding new boss from hell Glenn Gallagher. Under his difficult direction, she, Jake Channing and Mark Anders are working on a buy-out of Thunderbolt Industries that looks suspicious to her. She believes it is a bad deal. She also receives emails at home from the anonymous Man of the People, insisting that Gallagher has done this questionable transaction before.

When Gallagher dies from chewing on a poisoned pencil, suspicion falls on Rachel, because she had described the modus operandi to her work-mates not long before the murder. Someone looking just like Rachel pushes office assistant Dahlia towards a train just after mentioning to Rachel she needed to tell her something important. With the help of her friends and her live-in boyfriend Peter Forrest, Rachel investigates, while hiding from the law and from clever killers.

The third Rachel Benjamin Mystery (see THE JINX and THE PACT) is a wonderful amateur sleuth thriller, in which the female buddies and Peter play the key roles in helping the heroine extract herself from being the prime suspect. Rachel is wonderful, as she goes from sure shot partner to loathing her odious new supervisor, to woman on the lam trying to prove her innocence and not get killed while doing so. Readers will appreciate this pleasing tale, that also warns fans not to chew on their pencils.