BRIDGET McKENNA – Caught Dead. PI Caley Burke #3. Berkley, paperback original; 1st printing, February 1995.

   The ending of book two in this series must have been fairly spectacular. At the beginning of this one, private eye Caley Burke’s boss won’t let her come back to work for a second week until she agrees to go in for counseling to see why she can’t sleep at nights. Not too many people ever shoot and kill someone, even in self defense.

   She agrees, but she decides to take a case on her own as her own form of self-help therapy. The son of her favorite waitress at her usual breakfast spot hires her to find out who his father is. His mother won’t tell him. Not only this is a situation in which you should be careful what you ask for, but it’s one which goes far beyond that. The very next day his mother is arrested for the brutal slaying of her sister.

   We are in Sue Grafton territory here. Caley lives in s medium-sized town in central California, lives alone and likes it that way, and when she gets her teeth into a case, she doesn’t let go. She pries and she pries, and bit by bit, the secrets begin to loosen and come flying off.

   Caley doesn’t have the flair of Kinsey Millhone, though. She’s effective but is a lot more workmanlike in her pursuit for the truth. There are a lot of suspects in the case, all the more so as the dead woman was intensely disliked by everyone in town, including her family. This means, of course, that Caley has to ask a lot of questions. Surprisingly, she gets a lot of people to answer.

   Overall, better than average, with decent clueing, more than two-dimensional characters, and an ending that just may catch you by surprise. (It’s intended to.) I’d read the next one, but after three books, there never was a fourth. I’ll have to go back and see what I missed in the first two.

      The Caley Burke series —

Murder Beach (1993)

Dead Ahead (1994)  Nominated for a Shamus award.
Caught Dead (1995)