Messages-Weyman Jones

Messages
Weyman Jones
Five Star, Nov 5 2010, $25.95
ISBN: 9781594148798

Mike Lyons’s mother, owner of Power Meetings, a corporate meeting planning agency, took for a lover a younger man charismatic Alex Reed who worked for the firm providing inspirational speeches to clients. One day the police were called to her place and found Alex dead; his body wrapped inside a rug as if ready to be taken to a dump. She was arrested; the evidence so overwhelming, the jury took only a few hours to deliberate and find her guilty.

Mike knows his mom very well and believes even if she was dumped she would not have killed her lover. He visits his father after a decade of no contact and learns his mom called him when she found the body, but she did not heed his advice. Meanwhile two women were murdered in a similar manner to that of Alex. Mike investigates to clear his mom’s name and get her out of prison. His inquiry leads to a Caribbean resort where Alex had been just before the homicide. However Mike is attracted to a woman, who is killed in the same way as in the states and the police think he did it. Mike is closing in on a killer who plans to murder Mike if the police fail to take him away.

Messages is a great thriller filled with action and misdirection which pulls the reader deeper into the storyline while adding complexity in determining if mom is the killer and if not who. In spite of the evidence, Mike believes his mom is innocent because he knows her and displays his love by risking his life to prove his assertion. Weyman Jones provides a suspense laden amateur sleuth tale as Mike and the audience run into The Unexpected as every clue leads to twists and turns.

Harriet Klausner