Review by Booklist Review
In this excellent first entry in Browning's Jo Wyatt series, set in Echo Valley, Colorado, computer-game creator Tye Horton is found dead, a presumed suicide. Police detective Jo Wyatt, however, believes he's been murdered, despite evidence found at the scene. In challenging the official ruling, Jo butts heads with both her soon-to-be ex-husband, also a cop, who is being promoted to sergeant over Jo, and with Quinn Kirkwood, who reported Horton's death. As Wyatt pursues the case, she learns that Horton had created a game that was being tested by three young people, including Kirkwood. Horton allegedly killed himself on the one-year anniversary of the death of Derek Walsenberg, another of the testers, who also is thought to have committed suicide. Another murder follows that, at first, appears to be an accident but convinces Wyatt that all three deaths are connected. Sidetracked by her husband's promotion and the arrival in town of an old boyfriend, Jo nonetheless solves the case, but is it in time to save the remaining tester? With interesting information about game design and the dark web, this is a must-read for cozy fans who enjoy small-town settings. There's plenty of backstory that can be developed in future books of what shapes up to be what looks to become a first-rate series.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This brisk series launch from Browning (Beached as Micki Browning) finds Echo Valley, Colo., police detective Jo Wyatt at the converted garage apartment where college student Tye Horton apparently blew his head off with a shotgun. Jo, who has a bad feeling about the death, pursues the case, encouraged by Tye's friend Quinn Kirkword and despite the disapproval of almost everyone in the police department, from the chief to her estranged husband, who's just been unfairly promoted above her. Jo discovers that Tye was developing a potentially valuable video game that's gone missing. Meanwhile, other young people involved in the game are dying--and the group's sole survivor, Quinn, starts receiving a series of nasty and increasingly threatening emails. Convincing action and vivid characters make up for Jo's credulity-stretching discovery of the murderer. Police procedural fans will look forward to seeing more of tough, smart Jo. Agent: Helen Breitwieser, Cornerstone Literary. (Oct.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A veteran Colorado cop faces the glass ceiling and a series of roadblocks in her first recorded case. No woman in the Echo Valley Police Department has ever been promoted past the rank of detective--certainly not Jo Wyatt, who's just been passed over for promotion to sergeant in favor of Cameron Finch, a considerably less experienced officer who also happens to be the husband from whom she's quietly estranged. When Quinn Kirkwood finds college classmate Tye Horton, who has diabetes, shot to death in his garage apartment, Jo can't help wondering whether his suicide is actually murder: "Why would a man shoot himself if you could overdose on insulin?" But Echo Valley Police Chief Grimes won't hear a word about it, so Jo and her mentor-turned-partner, Squint MacAllister, are left on their own. Tye's senior project, an innovative video game he was developing with Quinn and Ronny Buck, leads Jo to question everyone from professor Frederick Lucas, the instructor who'd tried to steal one of Tye's earlier projects, to Ronny's wealthy, powerful father, Xavier Buck, to District Attorney Zachary Walsenberg, whose son, Derek, killed himself a year ago while he was reviewing an earlier version of Tye's game and whose wife, Alice, was Tye's landlady. None of them takes any more kindly than Chief Grimes to Jo's theories, and all of them carry a lot more clout than her. Not surprisingly, retired police captain Browning--who's previously written as Micki Browning--is best on Jo's professional frustration with a department that values her labors as long as she doesn't step out of line. Thoroughly workmanlike, if not terribly original or surprising. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
