Rett MacPherson Dead Man Running

Dead Man Running

In New Kassel, Missouri, reporter Sam Hill asks genealogist Torie O'Shea to investigate the background including family trees of the two candidates running for mayor in a close intense election. Though she hates the incumbent Bill Castlereagh and his opponent is her stepfather, Sheriff Colin Brooke, Torie agrees.

She soon finds some interesting oddities in Castlereagh's past that do not add up. Before she can dig deeper, the mayor and his wife vanish. At about the same time a Mafioso from Chicago takes a room at the Murdoch Inn while bikers fire shots at people taking a hayride. Refusing to allow the Mafia to force her off her investigation especially since she has found ties between the gang and the missing mayor and upset with her husband who seems to want her also off the case, Torie keeps probing the past and the present while her marriage appears heading towards incineration.

As always Torie drives the men including the newcomers (and some women) in New Kassel crazy with her escapades. The storyline is interesting as the heroine's marital troubles take a back seat to her need to learn what is happening in her small town though Torie is more comfortable digging into the past then the present. She remains an amusing fascinating protagonist able to carry the fun tale, but most readers will have figured out the solution to the mystery early on.

Rett MacPherson

St. Martin's, Apr 2006, $23.95

ISBN 0312334109

Harriet Klausner