Bitch Slap

Michael Craft. Minotaur Books, $23.95 (243pp) ISBN 978-0-312-30530-7

In Michael Craft's Bitch Slap: A Mark Manning Mystery, the seventh entry in this consistently well-crafted cozy series (after 2002's Hot Spot), Midwest journalist Manning and his lover Neil Waite must once again rush to the aid of a good friend accused of murder. Expect some unconventional plot twists in this tale of a newspaper merger that goes fatally awry.

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