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Two
Cold Case Enigmas Wrapped in a Politically Charged Whodunit
Krogman’s
book is snappy, well written, and easy to get into. The
characters are believable in the presentation of their personal and professional lives. The author’s vivid depictions of criminal
activity and detective work are detailed and accurate, without feeling like a police
procedural. The dialog is authentic. Indubitably
Krogman has experience with law enforcement, likely civilian and military.
This
is definitely one of those books that falls into the "can't put it down"
category.
Not Above Suspicion captured my attention
straightaway. The author wasted no time
introducing a sense of drama and personal panic. Krogman
uses a married couple’s on-edge relationship as a way of creating tension, and
connecting it seamlessly to the mystery and suspenseful curiosity surrounding the wife’s
disappearance. The complexity of the
relationship established in the first chapter is maintained by a politically charged
atmosphere. The fact that the husband is a
powerful Missouri State Senator acts as a catalyst and underlying theme, carrying the
reader through to the last page—despite the half-dozen twists, turns, dead ends and
frustrations involved in the murder investigations.
That’s
right, in Not Above Suspicion the reader gets
two cold case mysteries wrapped into one. In
fact, Not Above Suspicion ultimately involves
two determined investigators who reopen a pair of unsolved murder cases.
When
the wife’s body is found, the sheriff suspects the Senator, but the District Attorney
is reluctant to prosecute due to insufficient evidence and the politically charged nature
of the case. The case goes inactive.
In a
seemingly unrelated case, a charred body is recovered from a burned out car in Kansas City’s housing projects.
The
fire was intentionally set and the corpse has a bullet hole in the back of the head.
The victim was dead before the car was torched.
Unfortunately, this case is turned over to the Cold Case Unit due to
mistakes and procedural errors.
Just when both
cases seem to be at an impasse, a startling discovery leads to the Senator’s arrest.
State Senator
Tim Krupp turns to a former friend and fellow NIS agent, John Harwell. Harwell is a private
investigator working in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota.
John
Harwell agrees to help out his old friend, but comes to regret it after finding out the
Senator had been having an affair with a lobbyist.
To make matters worse, Harwell is under immense pressure to solve the case. He has less than a week.
Circumstances,
scant evidence and an investigator’s intuition lead Harwell to Kansas City and the
Kansas City Police Department Homicide Unit to get help.
There, he is faced with a conundrum: the suspect with the means and
opportunity to commit the crime is the victim of a murder case that has gone cold.
The Kansas City
case is reopened as Harwell teams with a KCPD Homicide Detective in an effort to link the
two cases and solve them both. Problem is, Harwell’s theory about the second
suspect is wrong, so they decide to follow an alternative trail that leads them into a
level of depravity that neither of them would have ever expected. It also leads
Harwell to the real motive and events leading to the murder of the Senator’s wife.
--Carolina
Summers Book Reviews
www.carolinasummers.com
June,
2010