Even Saints Have Deadly Secrets
In her new thriller, THE SORORITY MURDER, bestselling author Allison Brennan mixes Greek life, a cold case, and the power of a podcast to find a killer.
Three years ago, Northern Arizona University’s Sigma Rho senior Candace Swain helped set up their annual Spring Fling charity event. She’d successfully fought to give the profits to Sunrise Center, where she volunteered to assist the homeless. Most everyone considered her a saint, except for a handful of her sorority sisters who knew what she was hiding. After all, they were part of it, too.
At the party, when Candace argues with several of her Sigma Rho sisters, including their president, Taylor James, everyone assumes it’s about the homeless man who came to see Candace. But the other party guests don’t know that the senior sorority sisters are keeping a deadly secret, and Candace wants to come clean.
That was the last time anyone saw her alive. They found her body a week later.
Now, senior Lucas Vega plans to resurrect the cold case surrounding Candace’s murder for his Criminal Justice senior project. He hopes to use his podcast, The Sorority Murder, to crowdsource clues about where Candace was for the week between her disappearance and murder. Because Lucas has no experience with podcasts, and of course has never investigated a murder, his mentor and chair of NAU’s Criminology and Criminal Justice Department, Professor Henry Clarkson, knows just what the podcast needs.
Regan Merritt had graduated from NAU under Henry’s tutelage 14 years before and retired from the US Marshals Service. When she visits the school to give a lecture on law enforcement careers, Henry has a request: that she provide her expertise to Lucas for the podcast. Although Regan suffers from trauma of her own, she has to admit she’s intrigued with Lucas’s theory about who murdered Candace and how, especially since he’s found inconsistencies in the autopsy report.
As Regan works with Lucas to resurrect the cold case, people call in to the podcast to report bits and pieces of information as to Candace’s whereabouts during the last week of her life. When a caller ends up dead, they know they’re onto something.
Read the rest of my review and interview with Allison in The Big Thrill.
