disclosure: the item mentioned was sent for the purpose of review

I’ve got another cracking read to share with you today.  Quarter to Midnight by Karen Rose was published through Headline last month and is the first in a new series of New Orleans thrillers from this author, as well as being my first introduction to her.

At Quarter to Midnight Rocky Hebert, a retired policeman is murdered in his own home in New Orleans, but it’s made to look like suicide.  Why?

Although Ricky had terminal cancer, his chef son Gabe cannot accept that his father would kill himself and he decides to hire Burke Broussard and his private investigation team to uncover the truth behind his death. Burke had worked with his father and was one of the few people Gabe trusts to solve the case. Burke gives his operative Molly Sutton, an ex-marine and ex-cop the case.  She’s a woman with her own heartache but there’s an instant connection with Gabe and with the need to find justice for his father.

As the plot of Quarter to Midnight unfolds and more characters are revealed including a young man called Xavier Morrow, it becomes clear that Rocky’s death is related to a murder in New Orleans twenty years before, during Hurricane Katrina.  It is also very clear that there are players involved in covering this and other murders up at the very highest level.

There are lots of twists and turns in Quarter to Midnight, with a range of believable characters that you become very invested in.  Power and corruption and a desperate search for the truth with a little romance thrown in for good measure.  I was invested from the start and now need to catch up on the three previous series of novels.  You won’t be disappointed if you get yourself a copy of Quarter to Midnight to read.  I wasn’t.