When her muffler finally gave out in a sleepy little Florida town called Indian Run, veteran police Detective Claudia Hershey figured it was serendipity that brought her there. Indian Run had everything that her hometown Cleveland did not: wide-open spaces, people who knew your first name, and -- best of all -- nothing more than nickel-dime crimes that were easier to solve than crossword puzzles. What better place to raise her teen-aged daughter?

So Claudia dug in, got hired on with the small police department that patrolled Indian Run's backwoods community, and began to relax for the first time in her life. She even found an evening here and there to play her oboe and try her hand in the kitchen.

And then death came calling. A woman turned up bludgeoned in her own home. But she wasn't just anybody. She was one of a small cluster of psychics and mediums whose long-ago draw as a tourist attraction had faded to little more than an idle curiosity -- a curiosity that bloomed again with her murder. The media nosed right in, and Hershey was thrust into a nightmarish case that reached from the secretive heart of the psychic community to the powerful corridors of the state Legislature. Suddenly, the skills she thought she'd never have to use again were not only needed, but challenged by the curmudgeonly police chief who'd hired her in the first place.

No one would talk to her. Not the psychics. Not the mediums. Not the dead woman's boyfriend, and certainly not the clients who'd come to her for readings. Hershey was on her own in a case that quickly evolved into a cat-and-mouse chase that could only turn more deadly.

In a fast-paced "who-dunnit" that'll keep even veteran mystery buffs guessing, IN THE SPIRIT OF MURDER puts a refreshing -- and human -- face on the standard "tough cop" police procedural. Claudia Hershey may have to work alone, but she'll have readers on her side from the opening page to the stunning conclusion as she makes choices that threaten not only her career, but her very survival.

Copyright © 2000 by Laura Belgrave