Review: A Crack in Everything (Susan Callisto #1) by Angela Gerst

• Hardcover: 250 pages
• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press (September 6, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590589440
• ISBN-13: 978-1590589441

Product Description

 

Politics, money, love . . . what could go wrong? 

Susan Callisto is pushing thirty and taking stock. Before she traded financial security at a Boston law firm for sandals and jeans in Waltham, she specialized in real estate law. Now she has reinvented herself as a political consultant for ordinary people seeking low-level office. Her income may be dicey, but Susan loves her new life—until her sometime boyfriend, Detective Lieutenant Michael Benedict, dumps her without a goodbye. Not one to mope, Susan uses humor and perpetual motion to push away the pain. 

Susan's new world is one where politics can turn deadly and even love may not survive. So when local high roller Charles Renfrow offers her a huge retainer to advise his political campaign, Susan is wary. Why would a scientist stalking the human genome want to be mayor of a small Massachusetts town? Finding the answer takes Susan through a maze of toxic secrets including those floating around Renfrow's biotech company. On her way to confront him, Susan instead finds the body of his beautiful assistant. Assigned to the case, Michael reenters Susan's life.

When Michael's suspicions settle on Roddie Baird, yet another, and favorite, of Susan's clients, Susan elbows her way into the investigation. She hopes to prove Michael wrong. As she probes—and lays her own life on the line—Susan uncovers a crack in everything….

About the Author

 

After law school, Angela Gerst moved from New York to Massachusetts where over the years she worked for literary journals, as a Boston Globe correspondent, as press secretary for the French Library, and most recently for Newton Magazine. Her interest in local issues involved her in organizing and running Newton campaigns for alderman and mayor, and from thence to creating the fictional world of Susan Callisto, political consultant. She and her husband live near Boston.

My Review

I really enjoyed A Crack in Everything which is the debut mystery novel by Angela Gerst.  Susan Callisto is a lawyer and a political consultant in Boston.  Her world is turned upside down when potential politician Charles Renfrow walks into her life.  Charles or Chaz as he is known is a charmer and he is the head of a biotech company that has questionable environmental concerns on the horizon.  His $20,000 retainer is too attractive for the struggling political consultant to pass up.  Then the bodies start piling up.  And Susan's ex Detective Lieutenant Michael Bennett walks back into her life.  As the plot thickens Susan has to examine all of the relationships in her life.  All of a sudden people aren't who they seemed to be.  As everyone's masks begin to slip, Susan realizes that everything in her life is filled with cracks...

Highly recommend this debut mystery novel.  I'm looking forward to the next installment in the Susan Callisto series by Angela Gerst.