How Secrets Die by Marta Perry
Series: House of Secrets, #3
Romance Suspense/Amish
June 28, 2016
HQN

Reviewed by Mandi

A hard-hitting reporter, Kate Beaumont unearths the deepest lies and brings harsh truths to light, but the story that lures her to the gentle town of Laurel Ridge, Pennsylvania, is closer to her heart than anyone knows. The details of her half brother’s sudden death have never made sense. She owes him justice, yet the one man who can help her is the stubborn sheriff she can’t stand.

Protecting his town is Mac Whiting’s top priority. Everything else, including pacifying a beautiful crusader on a mission best left resting in peace, is secondary. But as Kate’s search embeds her in his world and attracts a skilled criminal, she needs Mac’s protection. Drawn together by deadly secrets, they must find a way to trust each other before a killer silences them both. (Goodreads)

I was in the mood for a cozy murder mystery and thought I would try this author. This book delivers a nice small town setting and a mystery but the heroine and I bumped heads on more than one occasion.

Kate’s brother was working for a local financial firm as an intern and seemed to be doing great. He had a history of drug problems but was clean and living his life on the straight and narrow. When his body was found, and the coroner said it was a drug overdose, the local police wrote up the report and on they went. But Kate is convinced her brother was not doing drugs and that his death was not an accidental overdose. After a year of mourning, and when she has time to take off of work, she travels to the town where her brother was living and working to do some investigating of her own.

The town’s chief of police is Mac Whiting and he isn’t too sure he likes Kate barging into his town and accusing him of not doing his job properly. Mac has seen his quiet small town go into a landslide of teen drug use, and he doesn’t know how to stop it. When Kate starts getting threatened by some of the townspeople (and worse) Mac steps up to protect her and they try to figure out what is going on.

This is definitely a small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Kate’s brother lived in a small cottage in town, so Kate takes up residence there to get a feel of his life. She visits where he was working, and gets a very frosty reception from the employees there. Hmmmmm – could be a clue. She watched a video diary he kept although he talks in code a lot so it’s not clear what he is always saying. HMMMMMMM – another clue.

As Kate digs deeper, she gets more threatening things happening to her – so she knows something fishy and bad is going on in this town.

Kate came across quite cold. Defensive and stubborn, I just didn’t like her all that much. She didn’t seem like that nice of a person.

Mac is a police officer through and through and feels a heavy burden to protect everyone. I enjoyed him – but the romance in this one is quite light. They don’t want to pursue anything until they are done investigating, but that is basically the end of the book. Makes sense, but if you are looking for romance, this one is more suspense.

If Kate would have had more personality, I would have liked this more.

Grade: C+

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