While walking home from a marriage counseling session,
Tracy Newman stumbles across a dead body lying in the
middle of the St. Margaret's Church driveway. The body
has a knife in its back, and Tracy runs to the police
department for help. As the medical examiner looks at the
body, he believes the cause of death to be a cracked
skull. It appears that the person was killed then the
body was moved to the church driveway where the person
stuck a knife in its back. Why would the body be moved?
Tom Holder is the Harton police chief and a member of St.
Margaret's Church. They very rarely have crime, and now
they have a murderer on the loose. Once the body is
identified as Mason Blaine, the head of the Spanish
department at Harton University, they have no shortage of
suspects. Blaine was not a well-liked man. There are the
members of his department whom would benefit from his
death with promotions and tenures, there are his students
whom he treated as slaves, and there are the women whom he
appeared to have aplenty. Which of these people could
have killed him?
Kathryn Koerney is a priest and teaches at the Seminary.
Since she has connections with the University, she helps
Tom, a beloved friend, with his investigation into the
murder of Mason Blaine. As they uncover more clues, they
realize that the true target may not have been Mason
Blaine. That in fact, he was killed to throw the
investigation away from the true target. Who is the
murderer really after? Will they find the killer before
another person has to die?
Christina Sumners has written a wonderful mystery. Her
characters are likable and easy to relate to. Tom and
Kathryn make great partners for a by the book police chief
and a not so by the book priest. FAMILIAR FRIEND is a fun
and entertaining read. This is the third book in the
series, and I am looking forward to a fourth.
Everyone agrees that Mason Blaine had a lot of enemies.
But one of them hated the chairman of the university’s
Spanish Department enough to kill him–and then stick a
knife in his back. The Reverend Kathryn Koerney is no
stranger to the sins of man, but this shocking example of
overkill in small-town New Jersey has even her puzzled.
Now, with Harton police chief Tom Holder, she finds
herself hunting a killer through the cloistered world of
academia–an unexpected hotbed of adultery, betrayal,
ambition, and revenge. For Blaine’s murder is only the
bait in a carefully disguised trap set for the real
victim. And with their personal and professional lives on
the line, Kathryn and Tom can only pray they aren’t
looking the other way when death strikes again.