Murder in the Locked Room
The only woman officer on a small town police force whose usual duty is manning speed traps, Melanie Jordan suddenly finds herself thrust into the middle of a puzzling case. Is the richest man in town dead by his own hand, as many prominent experts believe, or has he actually been murdered, as Melanie’s gut feeling tells her? The overwhelming obstacle to her theory is that Walter Braxton Johnson was shot in the head, pistol clutched in his hand, while residing in a totally locked room with no possible way for another person to get in…or out.
As she investigates the case, other people with close ties to Johnson also commit suicide, and the “person of interest” list from among the survivors continues to grow. Melanie’s superiors chalk up the deaths to “coincidence,” but the officer suspects murder and doggedly follows the evidence. Joining forces with a college student working on her doctorate degree in psychology, Melanie is able to formulate a theory that explains how and why the murder was done. Her dedication and perseverance finally lead to an arrest.
But neither the officer nor the town is quite prepared for the subsequent trial that follows. The courtroom drama explodes with unexpected twists, turns, and seeming betrayals as the rival lawyers jockey for position with the jurors. Nothing is what it seems to be on the surface, which sets the stage for a surprise ending that both shocks and satisfies the reader, who finds out that he/she has also been part of the experiment going on in the novel.
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