Book #46 - Bloody Mary

  A game changing book for Jack Daniels in Bloody Mary. I’m not sure where this falls in the series, but I found it to be a great book. It’s a mystery, sometime after the Gingerbread Man attack. The book seems to be long, covering  a lot of activity in Jack’s life and it enthralled me for a weekend.

We start with a killer, as expected. However in this case it’s just a pair of arms that show up in the morgue, extra arms that don’t belong to a body. When Lt. Daniels goes in, she discovers they are bound with her own handcuffs.

The book then segways down to Florida where Daniels’ mother has broken her hip. Jack goes down, telling her mother that she needs to move back to Chicago or go to assisted living, and leaves with the situation unresolved. However later, the mother comes back to Chicago, moving in with Jack, and disturbing her life when the mother’s boyfriend comes to visit and they can’t seem to get enough sex.

Meanwhile we get clues, and realize early on that the killer is a cop working with Lt. Daniels. He’s stealing things from JAck and Herb, her partner, and using them on bodies. He kills a few people before Jack figures it out and manages to trap him in a department store with his wife. She bursts into a dressing room, where the cop is killing his wife. He fires through her body, hitting Jack. She fires back, nicking his head and knocking him out. She lays there, watching the wife die as cops burst in.

The book the cuts to months later. Jack is recovered and almost about to go back on the job, but the killer has a stroke of luck. A brain tumor was discovered when his bullet wound was treated and he’s claiming insanity and amnesia because of the tumor.

The book spends it’s second half dealing with this situation, Jack trying to figure out how to get around this insanity plea that might let the killer loose. At the same time she has the turmoil of her ex-husband in town, and the offer to move in with Latham, her boyfriend. Herb is changing as a result of his Atkins diet and looking to leave his wife, and Jack must race the clock to stop this killer from being released.

She does, but he escapes and we have a bloody finish, one that I’m sure will carry over into the next book (which I’m trying to track down). A great read. Get this one, but read one Whiskey Sour first.