If Looks Could Kill

Rating:
Summary: Deserves every award!
Review: Fran Kirk is a delight. She's a real woman, with real problems --and a real sense of humor and sarcasm. The mystery is strongly plotted and devious enough to keep the reader guessing. Snappy dialogue makes this one a page-turner. Highly recommended detective novel featuring a promising female sleuth. No wonder it was a SHAMUS Award finalist!

Rating:
Summary: Crime novel
Review: Fran Kirk was a battered wife, and one night, while she was trying to take her dog to the vet, her ex-husband Dick attacks her in her garage. She manages to drive away and goes to the police station, and is shocked to discover that Dick is dead. Returning to the house, she recognises Sgt. Haeuser’s car. Wasn’t it there when she drove away earlier?

Fran starts a new job, working as a telephone receptionist, but soon she is offered work as an insurance investigator. A murder vicitm, Sammy, the owner of the beauty parlor below her office, had a life insurance worth a million dollars to his wife. Is the wife guilty? Fran discovers more of Sammy as she investigates the claim. With a string of girlfriends and gambling buddies, there are as many suspects as there are grains of sand on a beach. Fran is determined to find out who killed Sammy, even if it means putting her own life in danger.

She starts getting strange phone calls, a man saying that he’s watching her and she keeps getting followed. A masked man in the woods tries to attack her, but she manages to escape? Who is he? Someone tyring to stop her from finding out what happened to Sam? Or someone else? One night, the masked man manages to break into her apartment and Fran’s life comes crashing down around her...

This is a very well written, fast paced crime novel, with a very interesting protagonist. Fran is not your usual investigator. At the start of the book she is a victim, both of her husband’s abuse and the incompetence of the police to protect her. By the end of the book, though, she has found her strength and depends on herself, no-one else.

The plot is good, with lots of twists and turns, with red herring motives thrown in every which way so that you’re not sure why Sammy was killed, never mind by who. There are suspects galore too, with little bits of people’s pasts to discover and mull over, just like Fran is doing.

A great crime novel.

Reviewed by Annette Gisby, author of Silent Screams and Shadows of the Rose.