Review - Death Notice by Todd Ritter

Book Summary from Amazon

Perry Hollow, Pennsylvania, has never had a murder. At least not as long as Kat Campbell has been police chief. And the first is brutal. George Winnick, a farmer in his sixties, is found in a homemade coffin on the side of the highway with his lips sewn shut and his veins and arteries drained of blood and filled with embalming fluid. Chilling as that is, it becomes even more so when Kat finds that the Perry Hollow Gazette obituary writer, Henry Goll, received a death notice for Winnick before he was killed.

Soon after, the task force from the Pennsylvania Bureau of Investigation shows up and everything takes an irreversible turn for the worse. Nick Donnelly, head of the task force, has been chasing the “Betsy Ross Killer,” so named because he’s handy with a needle and thread, for more than a year. Winnick seems to be his fourth victim. Or is he?

My Review - 3 1/2 More Sugar Please

Overall a good debut, I can see Todd Ritter becoming an author that has a formula and gets his execution down to perfection.  There was one scene, (cemetery) a total edge of your seat, not breathing moment.  That was up there with the best authors in my opinion, definite potential.

There were some areas of the story that felt like the norm, I had read it before and other times the tension was built up nicely.  A small town dealing with a serial killer, this was done well but when you read lots of thrillers like me you begin picking things a part so I figured out a huge part and a clue was so in the readers face it almost gave it away.  I find this to be a similar style to Mary Higgins Clark or even a cozy mystery, the main difference is Todd Ritter threw in some brutal description.

If you love the whodunit mysteries, you will really enjoy this one.  The death notices arriving and then the race against the clock to save the person was good tension.

The prologue didn't grab me, I think this could have been left out.  Mainly I felt I have read this before but I look forward to seeing where Todd Ritter takes us next.  Bad Moon was recently released, I will read that soon.

Thanks to Kaye Publicity for both Death Notice and Bad Moon, I appreciate it.  She also supported Thrill Week and gave away Death Notice and other books.