Title:	A Killing on the Hill
	Author:	Robert Dugoni
	Published:	April 9, 2024, Thomas & Mercer
	No. of Pages:	352
	Cover Price:	$12.78 Paperback, $5.99 Kindle

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Bestselling award winning author, Robert Dugoni’s first historical novel, A Killing on the Hill, is set in 1933, during the Great Depression when most people were struggling. However, there was a lot of corruption going on across the country. Seattle had its share of “underworld” characters, and on a morning in June, George Miller, who owned the Pom Pom Club which few could afford to patronize, shot Frankie Ray, a boxer, and told the police a story that didn’t add up. Ernie Blunt, the Chief Detective on the case, along with the prosecutor, were at the hospital when Frankie died, and it was thought that he had been shot over Ray’s $55.00 Cadillac payments and an $80.00 hospital bill for his girlfriend. Young William Shumacher had just come to Seattle from Kansas City to take a job with the Daily Star newspaper as a reporter, and Blunt called him to accompany him to the crime scene and hospital so the paper would get the correct story. Shumacher, who was called “Shoe,” saw that this was his chance to make it big in his new profession, and since jobs were very hard to get, he wanted to do well. He puts his all into the investigation, to find a real motive and to keep the stories going each day from the courthouse during the trial. His ambition and drive would easily lead to his success or death.

Dugoni is a brilliant storyteller, and in this one, he not only does a genius job of storytelling, but also making readers feel that they are a part of the time period and living this story in real time. The characters are developed so well that most of us who had grandparents or great-grandparents will be familiar with those who lived during that time, and these characters ring true.

Dugoni’s first historical novel is fabulous, and will keep readers on the edge, as well as take them back to a time of gangsters, prohibition, and poverty. Hopefully Shoe will be back in subsequent novels.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.