Review: Darker Than Any Shadow by Tina Whittle

• Hardcover: 250 pages
• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press (March 6, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590585461
• ISBN-13: 978-1590585467

Book Description


The dog days of summer have arrived, and Tai Randolph is feeling the heat. Running her uncle’s gun shop is more demanding than she ever imagined. Her best friend Rico is competing for a national slam poetry title. And Atlanta is overrun with hundreds of fame-hungry performance poets clogging all the good bars.

She’s also got her brand-new relationship with corporate security agent Trey Seaver to deal with. SWAT-trained and rule-obsessed, Trey has a brain geared for statistics and flow charts, not romance. And while Tai finds him irresistibly fascinating, dating a human lie detector who can kill with his bare hands is a somewhat precarious endeavor.

And then just when she thinks she might get a handle on things, one of Rico’s fellow poets is murdered . . . and Rico becomes the prime suspect.

Tai pushes up her sleeves and comes to his defense with every trick in her book a little lying here, a little snooping there. Trey wants her off the case immediately. So does Rico. Every poet in Atlanta has a secret, it seems, and one of them is willing to kill to keep theirs quiet. But someone else wants her on the job, someone dropping anonymous clues and clandestine tip-offs her way. Someone with an agenda that’s looking either positively heroic . . . or downright deadly.

Will Tai’s relationship with Trey survive another foray into amateur sleuthing? And even more importantly, will she?

About the Author

Biography

Tina Whittle is a mystery writer living and working in Southeast Georgia. THE DANGEROUS EDGE OF THINGS, her first novel, debuts February 2011 from Poisoned Pen Press. Set in contemporary Atlanta, THE DANGEROUS EDGE OF THINGS is the first book in a series featuring gun-shop owner Tai Randolph and corporate security agent Trey Seaver.

Her short fiction has appeared in The Savannah Literary Journal, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and Gulf Stream, which selected her story "Lost Causes and Other Reasons to Live" as the 2004 winner of their Mystery Fiction contest. She is also a columnist and feature writer for The 11th Hour, a local alternative newspaper, and a professional tarot reader. When not writing or reading, she enjoys golf, sushi, mini-pilgrimages, and spending time with her family (one husband, one daughter, one neurotic Maltese and three chickens).

You can find her online at http://www.tinawhittle.com.

My Review

This is the second Tai Randolph mystery in Tina Whittle's series.  I enjoyed this book even more than the first one.  I don't think that I had ever heard of a poetry slam before reading this book.

A poetry slam is a competition for poets.   Darker Than Any Shadow revolves around poets and their competitions.  This unique setting sets apart this mystery from others that I have read before. I like the characters of Tai, Rico and Trey better in this outing.  They seem more human, more believable, more fleshed out.

I really enjoyed the mystery aspect of it.  I was surprised by who the murderer was and surprised by the motives of the murder.

So all in all a good read.  I'm looking forward to more in this series.