Author: Jamie Lee Scott

Series: Kate Darby

Genre: Mystery/Crime

Publisher: Indie

Pages: 270

Kate Darby grew up in foster care, as her mother was a drug addict and alcoholic. Although she grew up not trusting the police, she is now an officer in the small town of Peculiar, TX doing her best to keep her town safe. As she’s heading in to the end of what has, up until this point, been an uneventful shift, Kate attempts to stop a care for a minor traffic violation. Instead of stopping, the Mercedes takes off on her, leads her on a chase, flips, and the driver runs for it. If that weren’t bad enough, there’s a dead body in the trunk. Now Kate has to go to the reading of the will of a grandfather that she never knew existed before working this case with her rookie partner and her ex-husband (who’s also her Sergeant). No big deal, right? 

This is the first in a new series from Jamie Lee Scott, author of the Gotcha Detective Agency Mystery and Willa Friday Food & Wine Mystery series’. I always enjoy Jamie’s books, but this one was very different from her other works in a wonderful way. It was much darker and grittier, but definitely still has her voice. The characters are all incredibly well developed and fleshed out, including all of the secondary characters. They all had a great foundational story built in this first book, and the ending just left me wanting more! I can’t wait for the second book in the series, Bang Switch, which is coming this month!