cover image Shield of Duty: A Frost Sisters Mystery

Shield of Duty: A Frost Sisters Mystery

Scarlett Dean, . . Five Star, $25.95 (277pp) ISBN 978-1-59414-855-2

James Patterson fans will like Dean's second Frost Sisters mystery featuring sisters Kate, a Southfield Heights, Ind., homicide detective, and Lindsay Frost, a former cop who solved her own murder in the series' opener, Invisible Shield (2007), and continues to adjust to an afterlife where one can still find romance. A killer strikes close to home when Kate discovers the dismembered body of a childhood friend, caterer Evelyn Jakes, in her car during a Wisconsin skiing vacation. Jakes, as she preferred to be called, had enemies, but who would cut Jakes into pieces and cast them in plaster? Kate and her partner, Det. Gerard Alvarez, investigate, while Lindsay, whom Kate can see and hear, lends otherworldly assistance. Dean laces her bewitching paranormal police procedural with whimsical humor and a touch of pathos, as Lindsay helps fellow ghosts—like an Italian mobster whose wife murdered him—understand why they're dead. (Feb.)