The cover of this book makes you think it's a cozy, but it's a serious crime novel that is set in a small town. I happen to love mysteries set in small towns, so I enjoyed this one a lot. Good characterizations, nice plotting, and the mystery was pretty good. If I had one complaint it would be that there were too many characters introduced at once in the beginning and I had a hard time sorting them out later. I wish I had taken some crib notes. But that is a minor flaw and I will definitely be looking forward to reading the next book in this series. ( )

“Fresh Meat” by Katrina Niidas Holm for Criminal Element

Every Last Secret by Linda Rodriguez is a dark, twisty, turny tale of love, lies, loss, and murder on a quiet college campus. Corruption, fraud, violence, pedophilia, misogyny, blackmail, and murder—Every Last Secret has it all (and then some!). Sounds like a pretty gripping tale, right?

And gripping, it is. But the most compelling thing about Every Last Secret isn’t the plot—it’s the way in which Rodriguez chooses to tell her tale. Every last detail is filtered through the eyes—and the mood—of her main character, Choteau University’s chief of police Marquitta “Skeet” Bannion: every person, every set piece, every action. Rodriguez doesn’t just occasionally state how Skeet feels about an object or a circumstance—she shows you with practically every sentence she writes, the end result being a richness and intensity you might not expect to find in your average mystery or thriller.

Read the rest at: http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2012/04/fresh-meat-every-last-secret-by-lin...

The idea that a campus police force would be in charge of the investigation of a murder, then a double, then a triple murder makes it difficult to take this book seriously. ( )