DENIED (A Kelly Pruett Mystery #2) by Mark Keliikoa will be published on May 11th, 2021 by Camel Press.
Private Investigator Kelly Pruett thinks she has signed on for a simple missing person's case when she agrees to look for her former friend/classmate's missing father. Not long after Kelly begins her investigation, the missing man's car is discovered submerged in a nearby river. Even thought Kelly found signs of a serious gambling addiction and a severed finger in Vince's house, the police take the accident at face value. Vince fell asleep at the wheel, ran off the road, and died when his car crashed over an embankment and into the river. But Kelly is tenacious, and she believes there is more to the case than meets the eye. Investigating Vince's gambling addiction put her in the crosshairs of local mobsters. and her questions about Vince infuriate some of the locals. When Kelly uncovers a shady land deal, she finds herself on the right track of determining why Vince was killed. And it also puts her in danger.
After a bit of a slow start, DENIED ramped up with the action. At first, Kelly is the only one who seems to think that something bad has happened to Vince. Not even the severed finger that she finds in his house is enough to get the local police involved beyond determining if the finger belonged to Vince. And then, after Vince and his car are found in the river, the police chalk it up to a tragic accident. If it wasn't for Kelly's tenacity to get to the truth and her willingness to put herself in danger, no one would know who killed Vince or why that person decided he had to die. There are a number of shady characters in DENIED, and they all make great suspects.
Having read DERAILED, the first novel in the series, I was excited to see what Kelly would get up to in the follow-up novel. Kelly continues to develop as a character, and her relationships with her daughter, ex-husband, former mother-in-law, and her new boyfriend grow and change as well. Kelly (and the reader) also learn more about her father—a private investigator who seems to have kept several secrets from his only child. I can't wait to see what happens next.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.