Death, Deceit, and Some Smooth Jazz
Claudia Mair Burney
Navpress, Jan 2007, $12.99, 375 pp.
ISBN: 1576839796

Alone and lonely, Dr. Amanda Bell Brown, forensic psychologist, buys Amos the Aussie sugar glider (a marsupial that has characteristics of a squirrel and a bat) when her doorbell rings. Police Lieutenant Jazz Brown comes to tell Bell that he wants a relationship. This shocks her because he told her weeks ago he wasn't available and she walked away from him. She notices his face is scratched and he isn't wearing a coat.

The medical examiner who happens to be her sister calls her to tell her to get out of the house if Jazz is there because his ex-wife is dead in his bed, a victim of strangulation. When she arrives at the crime scene she doesn't think Jazz did it because she believes it was not a crime of passion but Jazz is arrested and let out on bond. He turns to Bell for comfort but she is afraid of getting hurt so tries to back away from a relationship. What she does do is investigate the murder because the police aren't looking for another killer and she knows Jazz is not the culprit.

This inspirational cozy is full of drama, romance and action without resorting to violent scenes to move the storyline along. The heroine is an everyday woman who loves yet pushes away the man she wants for fear to take a chance. That flaw makes Amanda seem realistic and not a stereotypical sleuth. Claudia Mair Burney has a winning series (see MURDER, MAYHEM AND A FINE MAN) leading to this reviewer impatiently waiting to read the next installment coming in the summer of 2007.

Harriet Klausner