Camille Minichino, The Carbon Murder

The Carbon Murder

Camille Minichino

Dunne, March 2003, $23.95, 256 pp.

ISBN 0312319584

After retiring from her job as a research professor at a California college, physicist Gloria Lamerino returns to her hometown of Revere, Massachusetts. In her late fifties, she met the love of her life homicide detective Matt Geneva and after a two-year courtship, she moves into his home. Matt undergoes a physical that reveals he suffers from prostrate cancer.

Meanwhile Gloria, a police consultant, is forced to work with Matt's partner on a case that is very close to her heart. Her goddaughter M.C. Galigani, who left her teaching and research position in Houston, believes that her abusive ex-boyfriend Jake Powers is stalking her. Her former coworker Wayne Gallen is the one who shows up at her apartment warning of the danger she is in because of a misdirected email. When a private investigator posing as a student of M.C. is found murdered in Revere, Gloria really starts to worry. Between taking care of Matt and connecting the dots on an illegal medical experiment run by someone who doesn't hesitate to kill those who get in his way, Gloria is busier than when she worked two jobs on the Pacific coast.

Two of the reasons Camille Minichino's mysteries are popular is that they are intelligent and believable. The heroine is a police consultant who handles herself in a professional manner, which gives her legitimacy to readers who appreciate some realism in their novels. Superb plotting, likeable characters and enough romance to appeal to fans of that genre turn THE CARBON MURDER into a fabulous crime thriller

Harriet Klausner