What Lies Within-S.D. Tooley

What Lies Within
S.D. Tooley
Full Moon Publishing, Mar 2010, $16.95
http://www.fullmoonpub.com
ISBN: 9780982035238

Chasen Heights, Illinois Police Chief Murphy takes disciplinary action against Detectives Jake and Frank for allowing a murder suspect to jump to her death. Murphy rejects the extenuating circumstances alibi so both work as animal control officers for a month. The humiliated partners are in the Ember’s building looking for a cat when they break through a wall that hides a staircase which leads to the fourth floor of a three-story edifice

Inside an apartment lies the mummified body of a woman sitting in a chair posed to be looking at a TV screen. The deceased turns out to be the woman Murphy was crazy about in his youth and who disappeared on the same day a bank robbery where he worked as a guard occurred. Murphy, running for mayor, learns his two cops dug up the body of a man on property that the realtor says belong to the Chief, but he denies owning it. There is further evidence surfacing that implicates Murphy as the killer of both victims. Ironically he hires Jake’s wife Sam Casey, a former homicide detective turned private eye, to investigate who is framing him. She takes the case though he is major reason she quit the force. Her uncanny psychometric skill to paranormally see thing she touches helps her, but it is normal detecting that leads her closer to the truth.

Known as one of the first to write paranormal mysteries, S.D. Tooley also writes the exciting Chase Dagger series under the name Lee Driver. The fast-paced investigative story line grips the reader as increasingly the evidence hangs the Chief who depends on a former employee he helped drive off the force. Character driven by mostly Sam, but somewhat by a beleaguered Murphy, fans will enjoy the latest Casey paranormal whodunit (see When the Dead Speak and Echoes From the Grave) as the Sin City segment of Chasen Heights was just two weeks from having its secrets interred forever.

Harriet Klausner