Scoop
By Kit Frazier
A Cauley MacKinnon Novel
Midnight Ink
2006
Setting: Central Texas
Cauley MacKinnon writes obits for the Austin Sentinel. Being an obituary writer and researcher is not what she wants to do, but it's a job. Seems all her journalism degree got her was work without recognition. But now trouble is brewing and Cauley's friend, Scott "Scooter" Barnes, an exotic pet shop owner, desperately needs her help.
Barnes is beyond depressed since his wife, Selena, left him. His life quickly went down hill after he injured his knee line dancing. Behind him was a contract with the Dallas Cowboys and his marriage to first-runner up in the Miss Texas Pageant. Beyond the shed where he's hiding out, and where Cauley manages to sneak into, are the police and the FBI. Cauley gets involved in the mystery of why a possible suicide attempt is receiving both the police and FBI's attention.
Shortly after, while filling her jeep's gas tank, a man approaches her, forces her to drive with him and demands answers. Seems he's interested in what Scott said to her in the shed. When Cauley doesn't give him any answers, he threatens her, her head hits the shift and the jeep sails into the lake. She struggles to make it ashore and to find a pay phone to call Jim Cantu, a local officer or detective, to tell him about Van Gogh. That isn't her attacker's real name. It's just what she nicknamed him because he's missing an ear.
Life gets even more complicated when Diego DeLeon asks her out. It takes awhile, but Cauley figures out that Diego is a mobster. No surprise, he's after the same information that Van Gogh is. But it doesn't end there, when Tom Logan, a sexy FBI agent, comes knocking on her door and John Fiennes, a U.S. Customs Service agent, isn't too far behind.
When Cauley finds Scott dead in his pet shop she quickly finds herself on the danger highway. Someone might be writing her obit in the near future.
SCOOP takes a young woman who deserves a lot more recognition than she's getting. Throws her head first into a greedy game of who-is-going-to-get-the-goods and pins her against a lot of dangerous characters. There's a good mix of character interaction and action in Frazier's mystery. You care about Cauley, the animals who love her and her crazy group of friends. A couple good twists in the end resolve the storyline and make sense. I'm looking forward to reading Kit's next book "Dead Copy" due in stores in May, 2007.
Four and a half pairs of red high heels
©Denise Fleischer, gottawritenetwork.com
December 3, 2006
