Crisis Shot By: Janice Cantore

Back of the Book

Tess O’Rourke dreams of becoming the first female chief of police in Long Beach, California. As commander of the East Division, she is well on her way . . . until the night she responds to an officer-needs-assistance call and fatally shoots an unarmed teenager. Despite being cleared of wrongdoing by a grand jury, Tess is so hounded by the public that she takes a job in Oregon to escape the bad press.

Winning over the residents of Rogue’s Hollow might be more difficult than adjusting to her new role as police chief in the small, backwater town. Especially when her closest friend, the pastor’s wife, goes missing and the woman’s cousin is found shot. Tess finds an ally in sheriff’s deputy Steve Logan, but as they track down Rogue’s Hollow’s first murderer, she worries that she’s breaking one of her rules and getting too close to him.

My thoughts

Crisis Shot is a wonderful mystery with great twists and turns, you will need to read a few pages twice to catch on.  Janice Cantore has a writing style all her own, instead of weaving a characters backstory though the pages she has it all written up front which make the beginning of the novel a little slow.  Yet once the back story and main characters are introduced, you jump on a fast paced thrill ride as people go missing, murders are discovered, and lives are changed. Every aspect of the novel, from the small town to the people, was perfect for this type of novel.  I never once felt like saying "how could they not know that" as seems to be the case with so many other mystery novels.  

Crisis Shot is entertaining, clean, well written, and leaves you wanting more.