Title: Murder Finds A Home
Author: Winnfred Smith
Publisher: Westwood Books Publishing
ISBN: 978-1643619835
Pages: 300
Genre: Fiction / Mystery / Crime
Reviewed by: Jake Bishop
Pacific Book Review
Famed baseball manager Leo Durocher is most often credited with the memorable bon mot, “Nice guys finish last.” Well, while that sentiment may or may not have been true in Leo’s line of work, it’s certainly not the case when it comes to the protagonist in Winnfred Smith’s mystery novel Murder Finds A Home. The hero here is a business owner from Atlanta, Georgia, who seems to be naturally inclined to help out those he’s known for a long time and those he’s just met as well. Almost everyone has good things to say about John Stone, and through his actions, readers soon come to know why.
It all begins when John gets a request from his old friend, Elliot, a wealthy real estate investor and philatelist, who lives and works in Southern California. In addition to his involvement with land and stamps, Elliot also oversees a homeless shelter just north of Los Angeles. Elliot asks John to come out and see if he can help solve the murder of Tom, the young man who was managing the shelter. Elliot feels the police are not as engaged in finding Tom’s killer as they should be. Almost before their phone conversation has ended, John is on a plane and on his way to help.
During his flight over, John meets Amanda, a young college girl he manages to have moved from a crowded middle seat in coach to a comfortable window seat in first class. His intentions are purely honorable, but by doing a good deed he winds up becoming involved in a blackmail situation that’s potentially as dangerous as the murder case he’s on his way to help solve.
Once in California, both the blackmail scheme and the murder investigation move along on parallel paths. As is often the case in these sorts of stories, neither is exactly what it seems, and danger levels plus body counts start to rise. Both plot lines are enhanced by the addition of intriguing characters with multiple agendas.
There’s a man trying to do right by his family even if it means his own destruction. There’s a beautiful young woman clinging to a secret that could shatter a relationship or perhaps make it even more meaningful. There’s a cadre of individuals involved in a fiendish plan to rid a community of one social problem with an unspeakably heinous solution. John has to take them all on while balancing a romantic entanglement that threatens to move to an unsustainable level.
Author Smith manages to juggle both his characters and their predicaments with a relatively light touch. Avoiding the typical hardboiled prose style too many mystery yarns try unsuccessfully to imitate, Smith opts for a less aggressive tone and keeps his hero’s exploits more gallant than grim. His frequent allusions to past gumshoes such as Nick and Nora Charles, Bogart portrayals of Philip Marlowe, and Richard Diamond adventures, bracket the wistful rather than wrathful approach Smith has chosen to employ. It is a technique that makes for a swift pace and easy reading. Smith’s protagonist is definitely a hero readers can get comfortable with. Perhaps even more so in additional John Stone stories that are likely to follow this one.
