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Amanda Crosby is a woman whose life is going downhill again. After getting the man who stalked and beat her put in prison, she has rebuilt her life and her self-respect. Her business has been doing well, her antiques business partner is on a trip to Italy, and things have been going nicely - for a while. Then she finds out her partner purchased a stolen goblet for their shop and she has to return it or they might go to jail. And as it stands, the business they have built might not be able to withstand the loss of the money. The very night her partner returns home he is murdered. And who better to be the main suspect but his angry business partner, Amanda Crosby? Then when her friend and fellow town merchant is found with her neck slit, the police put the clues together and the guilty party is the man who had previously stalked Amanda. The problem is that this man is still in prison. With the help of her former cop brother, along with the obvious fact that Amanda is innocent of the crime, Chief Sean Mercer of the Broeder Police Department, undertakes the job of investigating the murders. He soon discovers that his most important task is to keep the lovely Amanda safe. This is the second of a three-book series that continues the story of three men in prison who make a deal with each other. Borrowing their idea from the movie Strangers On A Train, each one would get even with the people who crossed one of the other prisoners. They think that since they have no connection to each other's intended victims, the police will have no way to figure out who did the crimes. DEAD CERTAIN by Mariah Stewart begins as a smart, well-paced murder mystery with a twist - the readers know who and why the murders are taking place. The tension of the story doesn't have to do with our finding out the guilty party; it revolves around the readers rooting for the police to discover the overall plan. I enjoyed the story at the start but as it continued on, too many new characters were brought in that were very clearly related to the other books in the series. And then from out of the blue, the two lead people suddenly fell deeply, passionately, and completely in love. I checked the author and lo and behold, she's a successful romance writer trying to break into a new genre. CERTAIN DEATH starts out well with solid realistic protagonists and an interesting antagonist but unfortunately the exciting and tight murder mystery soon starts to dissolve into a romance story and every bit of tension is drained from the book. By the end, the only question the reader has on her mind is how can the author wring yet a third story from this, now tired, premise.
Reviewed by Sharon Katz, July 2004
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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