cover image Every Last Secret

Every Last Secret

Linda Rodriguez. Minotaur, $24.99 (304p) ISBN 978-1-250-00545-8

While this winner of the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition doesn’t contain a plot element that genre fans haven’t seen before, Rodriguez writes clearly and forcefully. Half Cherokee Marquitta “Skeet” Bannion has left the Kansas City, Mo., police department, where she had become the highest-ranking female officer, in part because she was tainted by a corruption inquiry that led to her policeman father’s retirement. She’s now the chief of campus police for Chouteau University in nearby Brewster, but her new job doesn’t provide the quiet life she was expecting. Skeet’s fear that the college paper editor, Andrew McAfee, who’s been accused of sexual assault, might be a target, is borne out when McAfee is bludgeoned to death. Solving the murder proves more complicated than it first appears. Fans of tough female detectives like V.I. Warshawski and Kinsey Millhone will be pleased. Agent: Ellen Geiger, Frances Goldin Literary Agency. (Apr.)