cover image What Doesn't Kill You

What Doesn't Kill You

Jan Grape, Five Star, $25.95 (246p) ISBN 978-1-59414-888-0

The brutal stabbing of nursing student Vickee Allen drives this disturbing mystery from Grape (Dark Blue Death). A former classmate of the victim, 16-year-old Cory Purvis, and Cory's half–Native American best friend, TyTy, are shocked to discover Vickee's body in an old house on the outskirts of the dusty Texas town of Bent Bell. Cory is dismayed to later learn that TyTy had been seeing Vickee. Even more alarmingly, Sheriff Michael Sparrow thinks TyTy might've been the killer. When it appears that Vickee was also raped, further investigation reveals Vickee had serious intimacy issues and too many lovers. Cory, who believes TyTy is innocent, turns amateur detective, while her store-owner uncle, Giff Purvis, reluctantly pitches in his two cents. Slowed by too much talk and not enough action, this grim morality tale eventually tumbles to a nail-biting finale. (Sept.)