Dying To Sell by Maggie Sefton. January 2012
Real estate agent Kate Doyle knew divorce was messy, but she didn’t expect it to be bloody. Kate agrees to sell the home of old friends who’re locked in a bitter divorce. She’s hoping the upscale house will be an easy sell in the Colorado college town. But her hopes turn to horror when she walks into the lawyer-client’s study to find him brutally murdered—stabbed in the throat. “A crime of passion,” says Kate’s police detective brother-in-law. The prime suspect is Kate’s close friend, the spurned wife, who begs Kate to help her.
Kate’s meddling turns up some surprising suspects. The successful lawyer deceived numerous ex-lovers as well as his wife. He’d also played off one land developer against another, dangling a choice tract of land as bait. Businesses were ruined and fortunes lost. Had the loser taken revenge on the wily lawyer? Or had an ex-lover killed in jealous rage? Kate’s real estate license helps her dig into the scheming lawyer’s dealings as she sifts clues from cyberspace to crawl space. Unfortunately, her snooping tempts the killer to exercise his own license—to kill.
This fast-moving, page turning drama immediately grabbed my attention from the first opening line, as I could not put this book down. The author did a good job at keeping me guessing with the many plot twists and palpable suspense surrounding this whodunit. With a great storyline, likable characters and a strong heroine, this novel was suspense-fully enjoyable.
I read this back in 2008 and am curious why she didn’t make a series out of it.
I didn’t realize that Ms. Sefton had written another series. I’m looking forward to it.
Dear kpbarnett & Mare F—I’m so glad you both enjoyed Dying to sell. It was written as a standalone not a series. It was written before the Kelly Flynn knitting mysteries but was pubbed after the first Kelly came out June 2005. The main deciding factor was seeing how few copies Five Star could publish. Dying rode Kelly Flynn’s coat tails and sold out of all of their print runs. However, Five Star could only print a little less than 2200 copies. And it couldn’t place their books in any chains like BN because they couldn’t offer big discounts like the chains get from the Big publishers. That was heartbreaking to watch, and I decided I didn’t want that to happen to the characters again. But Worldwide did a paperback version. Now it’s on ebooks and I think KAte Doyle will find a much bigger audience.