In Their Blood-Sharon Potts

In Their Blood
Sharon Potts
Oceanview, Oct 2009, $25.95
ISBN: 9781933515625

On elite restricted Lotus Island off Miami Beach, a trespasser murders Miami Intercontinental University controversial economics Professor D.C. Stroeb and his wife Rachel, a CPA, in their affluent home. The intruder does not harm their sixteen year old daughter Elise who was there during the home invasion and is mentally traumatized, and stole laptops; nothing else was touched.

Their twenty-two year old shocked son, Jeremy, rushes back from Europe where he was backpacking across the continent to bury his parents and obtain guardianship of his frightened sister who fears the killer will return to finish the job. The brother of D.C. Uncle Dwight an attorney and Aunt Selma object to Jeremy being his niece’s guardian; insisting he is too young and immature. Jeremy vows to learn who and why starting with questioning lead Police Detective Kuzniski. Next Jeremy obtains work at his mother's CPA firm Piedmont Coleridge Miller and enrolls at MIU. He begins digging into the work history of his late parents while connecting with his father's foreign exchange graduate assistant Marina Champlain who says the arson last fall was proof that his dad’s position to end the Cuban embargo was hotly opposed. As he crunches the numbers of his findings, nothing adds up and the bottom line remains the same: his two parents dead.

This is a super amateur sleuth tale starring a sympathetic hero who seeks closure for himself and his hurting sister. The story line is fast-paced throughout as Jeremy works the probe into the work of his parents from inside. In some ways a coming of age story family drama, IN THEIR BLOOD is a terrific creative not by the numbers thriller.

Harriet Klausner