LAUREN'S SMALL TOWN MYSTERIES--SET IN HER HOME TOWN OF CHESTER

 Dead on Ice is the first installment of Lauren Carr’s new series (Lovers in Crime) featuring Hancock County Prosecuting Attorney Joshua Thornton and Pennsylvania State Police homicide detective Cameron Gates.

Spunky Cameron Gates is tasked with solving the murder of Cherry Pickens, a legendary star of pornographic films, whose body turns up in an abandoned freezer. The case has a personal connection to her lover, Joshua Thornton, because the freezer was located in his cousin’s basement. It doesn’t take long for their investigation to reveal that the risqué star’s roots were buried in their rural Ohio Valley community, something that Cherry had kept off her show business bio. She should have kept her hometown off her road map, too—because when this starlet came running home from the mob, it proved to be a fatal homecoming. 

 When Homicide Detective Cameron Gates befriends Dolly, the little old lady who lives across the street, she is warned not to get lured into helping the elderly woman by investigating the unsolved murder of one of her girls. “She’s senile,” Cameron is warned. “It’s not a real murder.”

Such is not the case. After Dolly is brutally murdered, Cameron discovers that the sweet blue-haired lady’s “girl” was a call girl, who had been killed in a mysterious double homicide.

Meanwhile, Prosecuting Attorney Joshua Thornton is looking for answers to the murder of a childhood friend, a sheriff's deputy whose cruiser is found at the bottom of a lake. The deputy had disappeared almost twenty years ago while privately investigating the murder of a local prostitute.

It doesn’t take long for the Lovers in Crime to put their cases together to reveal a long-kept secret that some believe is worth killing to keep undercover. 

  "Killer In The Band is well written, the plot is amazing. It kept me guessing. There's a lot of intense moments as well as twist and turns and kept me turning the pages." - Review by Books Dreams, Life.

 "Overall, a brilliantly woven mystery thriller, with a clearly surprising climax." - Review by The Readers' Muse. 

"I like that the characters are all flawed in some way just like "real" people and that they try to overcome those flaws as the story progresses. My favorite characters, however, are the animals. From Gulliver the horse who opens stalls to Charley the rooster who attacks almost everyone, they bring humor to an otherwise suspenseful story." - Review by Bound4Escape. 

 
It's a Summer of Love & Murder!  

Joshua’s eldest son, Joshua Thornton Jr. (J.J.) has graduated at the top of his class from law school and returns home to spend the summer studying for the bar exam. However, to Joshua's and Cameron's shock and dismay, J.J. moves into the main house at Russell Ridge Farm and Orchards, the largest dairy farm in the Ohio Valley, in order to rekindle a romance with Suellen Russell, the one-time leader of a rock who is twice his age. Quickly, they learn that she has a deep dark secret.

The move brings long buried tensions between the father and son to the surface—not the least of which being J.J.'s inexplicable dislike for his stepmother Cameron. But when a brutal killer strikes, the Lovers in Crime must set all differences with Joshua's son aside to solve the crime before J.J. ends up in the cross-hairs of a murderer. 

 "In The Root of Murder, the author takes a great mix of ingredients - one husband found mysteriously killed in a very personal attack, a drug-addicted son-in-law who looks like a shoe-in for the murder, another husband missing, a past death that now looks suspicious, old high school rivalries, a wedding, a vision of a wedding dress that doesn't exist, and a mix of pets each full of character (my fav this time around is Charley the watch rooster) - and weaves a story through all of these separate elements that keeps you reading just one more page, just one more page, just one more page until you reach the end.
"What I love as well is that with each new book, we continue to hear more of the personal history of some of the characters unique to this series. And each time we learn more about their past, the image of who they are becomes clearer. After reading four books in the Lovers in Crime series, the characters of Joshua, Cameron, JJ, and Poppy have become real to me. They feel like people I have met personally. Carr also always finds a way to move the story fluidly between the lighter, dangerous, funny and sad moments. It makes the reading easy and leaves you with a smile on your face at the end.
"As always, I can't wait for her next story to be published. I guess I really need to start reading slower." Review by Marilyn R. Wilson, Olio by Marilyn 

 Homicide Detective Cameron Gates learned long ago that there is no such thing as a typical murder case. Each mystery is special in its own right—especially for the family of the victim.

The homicide of a successful executive, husband, and father seems open and shut when the murder weapon is found in his estranged son-in-law’s possession. The circumstantial evidence is so damning that when her step-son, J.J. Thornton, agrees to act as the defendant’s public defender, he assumes his first murder case will be a loss. Only the report of a missing husband proves that this case is not as open and shut as it seems.

Strap on your seat belts for a wild ride in this mystery rooted in decades of deception that sprouts into murder.