The Perfect Suspect (Catherine McLeod Mysteries, No. 2) - Hardcover

Margaret Coel is the New York Times bestselling, award winning author of the acclaimed novels featuring Father John O'Malley and Vicky Holden, as well as several works of nonfiction. She is originally a historian by trade and lives in Boulder, Colorado.

A politician is murdered. A witness recognizes the killer and anonymously contacts journalist Catherine McLeod (who was introduced in 2008’s Blood Memory). Catherine has a difficult road ahead of her, because she has no idea who the witness is, and the killer appears to be the detective in charge of the murder investigation. (That wasn’t a spoiler: the author divulges the identity of the murderer in the opening pages.) The story’s structure will be familiar to Columbo fans, with Catherine standing in for the raincoat-wearing detective: the reader watches her try to solve the crime, while at the same time observing the murderer do her damnedest not to get caught. The story has a goodly amount of twists and turns, but it’s the characters who hold our interest: the determined investigator and the smart but increasingly desperate killer. A clever cat-and-mouse game. --David Pitt