DEAD AS A DOOR KNOCKER

A novice house flipper lands in trouble when her first property becomes a murder scene.

Ready to grow from property manager to real estate investor, Whitney Whitaker is preparing to take her real estate licensing exam while she’s working her full-time gig managing rental properties for Home & Hearth. Her biggest account, with high-end owner Rick Dunaway—quite a get for Nashville—ends emphatically when Whitney has to evict the tenants who have trashed his beautiful house. Furious with the renters, Rick loses his cool with Whitney, something that sends her into a tailspin until Rick offers to sell her the house to banish his own stress. Thrilled with the prospect of her first flip, Whitney’s certain she can use her carpentry skills to turn the old house into something as profitable as it is beautiful. She brings in her cousin Buck, relying on his expertise and his share in the capital investment. As investing mogul Thaddeus Gentry III breathes down her neck to take the house off her hands, Whitney resolves to show that she can make something of the place even when she and Buck hit a string of bad luck. But the corpse Whitney finds in the flower garden out front may be the death blow to her real estate dreams and her freedom, since Detective Collin Flynn seems determined to charge her with the murder. If only Whitney and Sawdust, her constant feline companion, can find the real criminal, she can keep herself out of jail and set herself up for long-term success.

Kelly (The Long Paw of the Law, 2018, etc.) introduces a new heroine who’s so physically and mentally capable that she doesn’t rely on anyone to crack the case, not even her cat sidekick.