A wealthy London businessman has been murdered in a most brutal way. There's a list of suspects that includes his young wife and her even younger lover, as well as his business partner in a successful restaurant. But when the victim's partner is also found killed by the same method, Detective Geraldine Steele has to rethink her investigation. Everything gets really confusing when two more bodies turn up with the same manner of death, but no connection to the first two men. Is a serial killer at work?
With a shortage of clues, except for a few strands of hair, Geraldine finds the case more perplexing than any she's handled before, especially when the DNA results are impossible to believe. With time running out to stop the evil killer before he/she strikes again, Geraldine and her team are grasping at anything to solve the baffling case.
Even though I had the killer and motive figured out early on, STOP DEAD by Leigh Russell is still an engaging murder mystery. The plotline is well-developed and the characters believable in their diverse roles. The backstory of Geraldine dealing with the recent revelation that she's adopted adds a deep personal touch.
When a successful businessman is brutally murdered, a long list of suspects develops that is filled with colleagues, ex-lovers, and debt collectors. But no one is more suspicious than his beautiful wife and her young lover. That is, until the victim's business partner suffers the same gruesome fate and another murder, seemingly unconnected except for the killer's signature, occurs soon after. Confounded, Detective Geraldine Steel is left with only one more lead: DNA at the crime scenes pointing to two women — one dead and one in prison. With a steady stream of bodies arriving at the morgue, Detective Geraldine Steel and her team are in a race against time to stop a vicious killer.
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