Murder Once Removed

In S.C. Perkins's Murder Once Removed, the first installment in the Ancestry Detective cozy mystery series, get ready to hold onto your seats when the past meets the present. For Lucy Lancaster, a local genealogist in Texas, it all started when Gus Halloran asked her to look into the records to discover the real reason why his great-grandfather Seth Halloran was murdered over a decade ago. At first, records had stated and claimed it was an accident, but with this lone photograph, it developed something more and sinister there. From there, she had gotten into the thick of things when she unearthed new discoveries of the murder with the initials of "C.A." And when she delved deeper into the historical background between the Hallorans, the Applewhites and the Ayerses, she became part of a cut-throat story that goes way back to the past. When her friend Dr. Winnie Dell ended up killed and the last of the ancestors of the Applewhites had stolen paperwork from boxes, it was up to Lucy to find out what was going on. And she had butted heads with FBI Detective Benton "Ben" Turner, who also doubled as a history professor, who wanted her to stay away from the investigation. But she was already into the thick of it and might've been way over her head. There was something possibly brewing between her and Benton. Along the way, she ran into some unsavory characters and talked to Senator Applewhite who was the center of attention. The closer she had gotten into the truth, the more she discovered who was the killer when her line was in the line to get to the heart of it.

If you loved Rett MacPherson's Tori O'Shea genealogical cozy mystery series, you would like this one even more too. I did care for Lucy and how she had a love for solving crimes from bridging the past with the present even if it happened to be unsolved mysteries. I loved how she had took charge to solve the mystery if it put her in harm's way and in danger. I did find Serena and Jo a hoot and Ben a hot piece of eye-candy. I did like the central location of Texas and the gripping scenes around the area from her workplace to Flaco's Tacos. This would make you want to sway and soon and be interested to find your own roots on your family tree with non-stop drama, plenty of action, a dollop of mystery with a spice of suspense.

Will you go out on a limb to read Murder Once Removed today?