Meryl Sawyer Half Past Dead

Half Past Dead

Meryl Sawyer

HQN, Jan 2006, $6.99, 384 pp.

ISBN: 0373770634

Three years ago Kaitlin Wells was convicted of robbing the Mercury National Bank. She went to Danville Correctional Facility. Now the prosecutor in her case Harlan Westcott informs her he knows she is innocent as new evidence from another investigation surfaced. He offers her a deal that will free her immediately on a work release program or she can linger for a year of two in prison until the undercover operation is completed. She agrees to help him catch the criminal once she learns her mother is dying from ovarian cancer though she knows her mother and sister deserted her.

Over the objection of the affluent, Ole Mississippi football fanatics, and those who blame him for the suicide of his high school girlfriend Verity, former big city cop Justin Radner is appointed temporary sheriff of Twin Oaks. Even before he starts he has a homicide to deal with but also looks into the bank robbery in which Kat went to prison; likewise she does too. As they compare notes, they plan to prove she is innocent while they fall in love with one another.

HALF PAST DEAD is an exciting police procedural-amateur sleuth romantic suspense with a heroine who wants desperately to prove she is innocent before her mom dies. The story line is action-packed, but also provides a cautionary tale that justice is not blind or equal as the prosecution could afford to go all out against Kat while she depended on brainless public defender way out of his league. Readers will appreciate this fine thriller that never slows down once the culprit knows the cop and the convict are searching to uncover him or her.

Harriet Klausner