February 1, 2019
Two months ago, Ilka Jensen (introduced in The Daughter, 2018) left Denmark to sell the Racine, Wisconsin, funeral home that her estranged father inexplicably bequeathed to her. It turns out, however, that Jensen Funeral Home is buried in debt and prepaid service obligations while casket suppliers and crematoriums have blacklisted them. The only thing Ilka is getting out of the fiasco is the opportunity to get to know her father through the things he left behind; but when she finds a stack of blackmail letters, even that sours. No one seems to know who Maggie, who authored the letters, is, but the pieces come together when Ilka learns that the husband of their recent morgue pickup, gunshot victim Margaret Graham, had an affair with Ilka's stepmother. Could that secret have caused her death? And who is trailing Ilka around Racine as she probes her father's involvement in a racehorse-stable scandal? Not as dark as Blaedel's popular Louise Rick procedurals, this well-crafted dive into family secrets will appeal to fans of Lisa Scottoline.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)