Books 101-102: Dead Weight and The Blissfully Dead
Book 101: Dead Weight (Lizzy Gardner #2).
Author: T. R. Ragan, 2011.
Genre: Crime Fiction. Private Detective.
Other Details: ebook. 312 pages.
Private investigator Lizzy Gardner knows a thing or two about living in the past. As a teenager, she was terrorized by a serial killer, an ordeal that haunted her for more than a decade. So when terminally ill Ruth Fullerton begs Lizzy to reopen the cold case into her daughter's disappearance, it's hard to say no. More than twenty years have passed since Carol Fullerton vanished, abandoning her car by the side of a California freeway. The police wrote her off as a runaway, yet something tells Lizzy the truth isn't so simple...Carol's cold case has barely begun to thaw when Andrea Kramer shows up at Lizzy's door. Andrea's sister, Diane, has been missing for months, and she's convinced a charismatic weight-loss guru is responsible. Diane was obese, but could her obsession with losing weight have led to her disappearance? - synopsis from author's website.
While not as disturbing as the first in the series, this was a fast-paced crime thriller that proved a highly engaging read. It had plenty of twists and again I was impressed by Lizzie as a character. I look forward to continuing the series.
Book 102: The Blissfully Dead (D.I. Lennon #2).
Author: Mark Edwards and Louise Voss, 2015,
Genre: Crime Fiction. Police Procedural.
Other Details: ebook. 418 pages.
She couldn’t believe that he wanted to meet her. He was famous. She was a nobody. Finally, someone could see how special she was… When the body of a teenage girl is found in a London hotel, DI Patrick Lennon is mystified. Nobody saw her or her killer enter the hotel, and there is no apparent motive-until a second teenager is found and Lennon realises somebody is targeting fans of the world’s biggest boy band. As Lennon struggles with both his home life and his rivals on the force, the pressure to catch the killer before he strikes again reaches fever pitch. And when Lennon makes a terrible mistake that ends in disaster, he finds himself in a race to save not only the lives of more teenage girls but also his own career. - synopsis from authors' website.
Although the authors point out that the boy band depicted in the novel is not based on One Direction, it does partake of the qualities of the group as well as others of the same type. Still although very contemporary in its use of social media this kind of phenomena of fan adulation has been around for decades.
I have quickly become a fan of these authors. The novel has exactly what I look for in a police procedural in terms of strong plot and characters that I care about. I was so happy to read the final note by the authors in which they shared that they are planning more adventures for DI Lennon. I can hardly wait!
Cross-posted to 50bookchallenge.