Jane Rubino, Raise The Dead

Raise The Dead

Jane Rubino

Llumina, 2004, $18.95, 237 pp.

ISBN: 1595263411

Ray Stites has six weeks to live if he fails to receive treatment; he has fourteen if he does, but he owes $50K and heath care is very expensive. He worries about how his beloved Kathleen will pay the bills he leaves behind when he receives a unique offer. If he kills three people, his debts will be paid and Kathleen will receive money to live off of. He agrees to kill a woman, a cop and himself.

Three years later in the Delaware Valley, widow reporter Cat Austen raises her two children alone. Cat overhears her lover, Cape May County Homicide Investigator Victor Cardenas, tell an associate that he loves her, wants to marry her, but must tell her the truth about her late husband Chris, a murdered cop. Stunned Cat begins making inquiries after confronting Victor who hides behind national security. She finds a tie to Kathleen Stites and the State of Art Fertility Clinic where she got pregnant, but the link to murdering Chris remains vague; Still, someone wants her to back off from learning why her husband was killed.

This is an exciting conclusion to a delightful Jersey murder miniseries that hooks readers with the three interrelated subplots tying together with no loose ends. The storyline is action-packed as the audience learns along with Cat why Chris was murdered and whether her new love Victor was an instrument in her late husband's death. Cat makes the tale in her need to know the truth regardless of what she learns and how she may feel if the betrayal she suspects is real. Jane Rubino furbishes a powerful thriller that will send readers seeking more of her terrific mysteries.

Harriet Klausner