cover image Dead Man Running: A Torie O'Shea Mystery

Dead Man Running: A Torie O'Shea Mystery

Rett MacPherson, . . St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95 (230pp) ISBN 978-0-312-33410-9

At the start of MacPherson's middling ninth cozy to feature genealogist Torie O'Shea (after 2005's Thicker than Water ), the small town of New Kassel, Mo., is in a heated mayoral election. Torie has a vested interest in the outcome: she loathes the incumbent, Bill Castlereagh, and the other candidate happens to be her stepfather, Colin Brooke. When a reporter for the local paper asks Torie to pull together the family trees of the two candidates, Torie finds some irregularities in Castlereagh's. Then Castlereagh disappears, some concrete mix is stolen from a construction site, a parade comes to a violent end, and a stranger who may have Mafia ties shows up at the Murdoch Inn. Meanwhile, the whole town is gossiping about Torie's marriage. Unfortunately, Torie is more often annoying than amiable, and only longtime fans are likely to feel they have much stake in her conjugal woes, the outcome of the election or the predictable explanation for the oddities plaguing New Kassel. (Apr.)