DEAD LIFT

A part-time investigator feels betrayed when her boss puts her at the service of the lawyer who defended her husband’s killer.

Emily Locke (Final Approach, 2009) thought her baby girl was gone forever, stolen by the gang that murdered her husband. She’s so grateful that Annette was returned to her and her adoption by Nick and Betsy Fletcher voided that she’s moved to Houston so that her daughter can be near the couple who raised her for five years, unaware that they could never become her legal parents. Now that Emily works for private investigator Richard Cole, she never imagines that her old friend could assign her to a case for Mick Young, the attorney who represented Annette’s kidnappers at trial. Once she finds out, she’s furious, but not furious enough to abandon Claire Gatson, Young’s latest client. Claire’s an enigma—cold enough to have had a series of affairs that killed her three marriages, but passionate about staying out of jail to raise her two sons. She denies knowing Wendell Platt even though her fingerprints were found on the weapon that killed the plastic surgeon. Looking for an alternative theory of the crime plunges Emily into the Tone Zone, a fitness club cum spa run by Diana King, wife of Wendell’s business partner. Led by her best friend Jeannie, a diva in rhinestone flip-flops, Emily navigates the world of Zumba and Body Pump to track a suspect with more than killer abs.

In spite of its silly confrontation scene, Rachel’s second case will give your inner detective a good workout.