“Smell of Death” is a great cozy mystery starring the fictional Rocky Bluff Police Department. Our main officer is Stacey Wilbur, a widow, a young mother, and a woman devoted to her job. When called out to investigate a crying baby and a non-responsive mother in an apartment complex, she knows what she’ll find almost before she opens the door – the mother has been repeatedly stabbed. When Stacey goes to tell the victim’s mother what has happened and to arrange for childcare, she discovers that woman, also dead, but this time shot. Stacey believes the two murders are connected – how could they not be? – but has no proof.
Meanwhile, a little girl is abducted from her front yard, and the entire department goes into action to try to find her. A rash of robberies breaks out, and one of the officers suffers deep emotional trauma over an incident that happened a while back, where he shot a suspect who turned out to be unarmed.
The wheels of justice turn as the officers investigate, solve their cases, and move on to the next. Stacey finds the seeds of a new relationship with one of her co-workers and begins to feel that perhaps she could start putting her husband’s death behind her, but everything comes crashing to a halt when the missing little girl’s body is found hidden on the beach, and Stacey’s own young son goes missing.
This mystery is great. It does have a little language, but nothing shocking. It does describe crime scenes, but not grotesquely. It strikes the perfect balance between giving us enough information and giving us too much. Author F. M. Meredith has created engaging characters, realistic crimes, and authentic police procedures that all weave together to create a very enjoyable story.
(This book was published in 2007 by Tigress Press.)
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