On Friday, February 13, 1976 one of the young women working at Dolly’s Gentleman Club, and her client, were killed. Twenty years later on Friday, September 13, 1996, Joshua Thornton ran into his long-time friend and current sheriff’s deputy, Mike Garner, who was on his way to see an informant about an old case of the murder of a prostitute.

Mike asked Josh to go with him, but Josh declined because he was having lunch with his children. Josh had a bad feeling when Mike left and he saw a Buick Bonneville follow Mike out of the parking lot. No one ever saw Mike again.

Eighteen years later, in 2014, children at a church picnic found a police cruiser submerged in a local lake. Once Mike’s car was discovered and the medical examiner identified the body, the ensuing investigation opened doors and unearthed secrets some of the most prominent members of the community wanted to keep hidden.

As Joshua and homicide detective Cameron Gates searched for clues, family tensions increased due to the couple’s recent marriage and Josh’s daughter’s jealousy because another woman was in the house.

As Joshua tries to work through his daughter issues, Cameron unexpectedly gets to know the notorious Dolly, and their professional comrades attempt to sort through the sometimes confusing plethora of clues. As they all pulled together, they found a tangled web of lies, deceit and murder that eventually led to the unexpected reveal.

Real Murder was written by prolific writer Lauren Carr, the best-selling author of the highly popular Mac Faraday Mysteries.

Real Murder was the second installment of the Lovers in Crime Mystery series featuring prosecutor Joshua Thornton with homicide detective Cameron Gates. Dead on Ice was the first.

The novel was a tantalizing and tangled story of greed and loss. It took me a while to sort out whom and when the characters were a part of the story as the author takes us back and forth through the decades.

While the body count rose the author used flashbacks and plenty of clues to help readers solve the case. Even so, the ending was a surprise. Stay with it as the story was well worth completing.

We are looking forward to the next Lovers in Crime Mystery due next year.

A special thank you goes to Acorn Book Services for providing us a complimentary copy of Real Murder for our review. All of the mystery stories written by Lauren Carr are available at Amazon.com.