Kay Finch, Final Cut

Final Cut

Kay Finch

Top Publications, Jul 2010, $14.95

ISBN: 9781929976683

In Houston, private investigator Corie McKenna waits outside the house where she tracked down Jack Litchfield who is in hiding. After a week of searching for him she patiently waits for Jack to appear so she can serve him with divorce papers. Jack's estranged wife Nora, owner of the exclusive spa Serenity in the City, calls Corie asking if he was served; Corie stays polite though the woman irks her; Nora's lawyer, the investigator's friend Wade, owes her the world for her putting up with this obnoxious client of his. She serves the papers, but a raging Jack drops them yelling at a retreating Corie.

She next goes to the home of Carmen Messina who cuts hair at the spa to serve her papers notifying her to be at the Litchfield divorce hearing next week. Instead she finds Carmen drowned in the swimming pool. HPD Detective Belton is cynical as he interviews Corie. Soon afterward, Jack vanishes taking more than his share of the community property with him. Other murders occur as Corie finds herself caught in the crosshairs all because of delivering subpoenas in a deadly divorce case.

The second McKenna Houston private investigation thriller (see Final Degree) is an entertaining whodunit as the heroine learns how nasty divorce can be while serving papers. The case hooks the audience as an unknown avaricious adversary is serving death with Corie seemingly one step behind the killer. Readers will relish this terrific Texas two-step of served and dead.

Harriet Klausner