Rollover by Susan Slater

Rollover by Susan Slater
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery/Suspense
Length: Full length (344 pages)
Heat Level: Sweet
Rating: 4 stars
Reviewed by Camellia

A bank heist turns sleepy little Wagon Mound, New Mexico on its ear. It’s no straight-forward, demand all the money at gun-point, and run out the front door kind of robbery. It’s a sneaky tunneling that probably took months to complete and put the thieves in a room of safe deposit boxes—not the vault which held some two million. Safe deposit boxes? What could have made it worthwhile to bypass a cool couple million?

Maybe the one hundred and ten year old sapphire and diamond necklace belonging to eighty-five year old Gertrude Kennedy was the lure. United Life and Casualty carried a policy on it for five hundred thousand and sent their investigator, Dan Mahoney to sort things out.

But he didn’t quite get there when expected. Catching a ride when his Jeep overheats, Dan is the hapless passenger in a rollover that kills the driver and puts him in the hospital only to find out this was no accident. Someone wants him out of Wagon Mound at any cost.

He doesn’t scare easily. He hasn’t lived his life looking over his shoulder and he’s not starting now. But when fiancée, Elaine Linden, disappears and people close to the case turn up dead, maybe he should reconsider. The note slipped under his door in the dead of night says it all—“it’s not what you think”.

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Rollover starts off in a deceptively ordinary way. There is the not unusual car breakdown on a lonesome road. Even the appearance of an old man in a wreck of a pickup truck is not unusual for that part of the country. However, by the end of chapter one, the mystery has begun and runs full throttle for the rest of the book.

Dan Mahoney, an investigator for an insurance company, sets out to check out and write up his report on a piece of stolen jewelry and ends up embroiled in a complicated mess that has him interviewing everybody from the bank president to the junkyard man. He is not a popular man in that little town.

Elaine Linden, Dan’s special lady, returns from Ireland to be with him when he is hurt. Their romance adds a facet to the story that creates a bit of normalcy among the other facets of the story where it seems everyone else is running amok with secrets and mysterious dealings. Ms. Slater does lead the reader on a merry chase. Trying to keep up with all the happenings is absorbing reading—the primary mystery is a solid thread throughout the novel, but lots of other unsavory, illegal things are happening all over the place.

The author uses the setting to ratchet up the eeriness, mystery, and danger. The incident of the burned car and the body in it is chilling—made me shudder. The people in white working in the dark, the howl of a dog in a lonesome place, etc. stirs the emotions. It seems the author was personally acquainted with the part of New Mexico where Rollover takes place.

Gertrude Kennedy and her stolen Tiffany necklace that is a treasured, expensive, one-of- a-kind heirloom with a history bring Dan Mahoney to Wagon Mound. The story that unfolds about the necklace made me think of “what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

Rollover is well-written and attention keeping with more than one breath-holding scene. It satisfied my craving for a good mystery story.

I invite you to enjoy it, too.