Pages: 209
Other People’s Skeletons is the FIFTH Rebecca Schwartz mystery by Edgar-winning author Julie Smith.
“Smith is a very funny writer with a nice feel for the absurdities of urban life.” -San Francisco Examiner
“Smith has perfect pitch … and gives us a multilayered mystery. A believable heroine.” -Booklist
What she’s about to learn will rock her world!
Rebecca Schwartz, “Jewish feminist lawyer,” as she’s fond of saying, thought she knew her best friend–and her boy friend. Not to mention her family. But everything’s about to change.
Secrets spill out of these pages like hornets out of a nest, each with its own distinct sting, as author Smith weaves a thrill-packed and complicated mystery that’s as much about how little we know about our nearest and dearest as it is about whodunit.
Rebecca’s shocked when Chris Nicholson, her glamorous law partner, is arrested for murder–but not nearly so shocked as when she discovers Chris can’t come up with an alibi. What she was doing, Chris says, involves a secret so damaging she’d be drummed out of San Francisco legal circles if anyone knew. All she’ll say is what her secret isn’t–crime, drugs, sex, alcohol, addiction, illness (mental or otherwise), or an eating disorder. So what’s left? Sure enough, when Rebecca uncovers it, her world tilts on its axis—and continues to list, ever more dangerously, as the story picks up speed and this formerly rational lawyer finds her worldview threatened by things she never knew existed. At least not in her circle! And Chris is far from the only one with a skeleton in her closet.
The murdered man, Jason McKendrick, was a much-loved columnist, a carefree bachelor with a million glamorous women, who also happened to have a very special friend who slept on a filthy mattress in his apartment. As Rebecca and Chris peel back the layers of Jason’s complicated world, they find he was leading not just a double life, but maybe many more. Only one person knows what made him tick. But can she stay alive long enough to tell his story?
Fans of Nancy Pickard’s delicate psychological probes, Janet Evanovich’s wild romps, and Marcia Muller’s complex yarns will appreciate this one.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Some readers have felt this and the previous Rebecca Schwartz book, DEAD IN THE WATER, were somewhat different from the first three–edgier, more realistic, and…well, just not as funny. Okay, I confess. I wrote them after I started the much more serious-minded Skip Langdon series and some of that mood just spilled over. I thought they were different, too, but to tell the truth, there wasn’t much I could do about it. I just couldn’t do slapstick any more. I used to apologize by saying “Rebecca lost her sense of humor, but reading the books all these years later, I don’t think she really did. I still found the dialogue funny, but the stories were more real, not as over the top. Still, what do I know? That’s just me reviewing my own books, sort of. I mention all this because, well..caveat emptor, y’all! — Julie Smith
“Julie Smith writes like jazz should sound–cool, complex, and penetrating right to the heart.” -Val McDermid
“Nobody gets inside her characters like Julie Smith.” -Linda Barnes
