Review: Lethal Lineage by Charlotte Hinger

• Author: Charlotte Hinger
  
• Hardcover: 310 pages
• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press (March 1, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590588371
• ISBN-13: 978-1590588376

Product Description from Amazon

A sinister Episcopal Bishop shows up to confirm Lottie and Josie Albright’s niece at the new frame church built on the corners of four Western Kansas counties. The twins are already agitated over his scathing sermon when the Reverend Mary Farnsworth flees to the anti-room after dropping the chalice during communion. Josie, a psychologist, lingers after the service to comfort her, but Lottie immediately orders her sister to leave when they discover Reverend Mary’s body. Alone with Talesbury, Lottie is frightened by the Bishop’s cold strange rituals for disposing of the spilled wine, but as Deputy Sheriff, she’s duty bound to attend to the death. 

 

Back at the county-wide picnic, an elderly lady informs Lottie that a man kneeling next to her scared Reverend Mary into a heart attack. Worried that this was not a natural death, Lottie calls in other law enforcement agencies. She soon learns that the beloved Reverend Mary was a woman without a past, and that the rogue Bishop has unexpected ties to Western Kansas. A sheriff from an adjacent county, unaware that Josie is an FBI consultant, assumes that seizing control of the investigation will be easy and instead arouses the twins’ wrath. Although they are used to double trouble nothing has prepared them for the malevolence of Sheriff Deal’s family. Forgetting that the past is always present, Lottie’s investigation into old documents riles up murderous century old rivalries and her volatile marriage reels when Keith takes control. 

 

My Review:

 

I was provided an ebook galley of this novel by Poisoned Pen Press through Net Galley for the purpose of this review.

 

The vastness of Western Kansas.  The unrelenting wind.  Plot twists and turns.  An evil Sheriff and his vicious inbred relatives. A scary Bishop and a brand new little country church.  Toss all of these together and you have an excellent page turner that is impossible to put down.

Lottie Albright made her debut in Charlotte Hinger's first novel in this series titled Deadly Descent. I wish I had read Deadly Descent first just because I know it would have been an excellent introduction to Lottie and her family.  But not having read the first book did not infringe on my understanding at all of any circumstances in Lethal Lineage.  

Lottie is both an under-sheriff in the county in which she lives, she is also the county historian.  Through both of these occupations she interacts with everyone in her county in Western Kansas.  It is through all these wonderful characters that the story evolves and keeps you from putting the book down.  I really wasn't expecting the ending at all but of course once it was revealed it made complete and utter sense!  I highly recommend this wonderful mystery.