Burnt Ends

by Laura Wetsel

Overview

Murder is juicier with a side of barbecue sauce.

Private Investigator Tori Swenson gets a strange accidental death case that looks like murder at one of her uncle’s drive-ins and decides it’s time to get revenge on her estranged family. Pretending to want a reunion, she appears at her uncle’s party to secretly investigate them. When her uncle suddenly dies, Tori’s case takes a sinister turn that makes her a suspect in her uncle’s death and the killer’s next target. To uncover who dethroned the barbecue king, Tori will have to face her own fiery demons while pursuing a killer who wants to make dead meat out of her.

For fans of Knives Out and the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780744311211
Publisher:	CamCat Publishing
Publication date:	09/24/2024
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 5.51(h) x 0.91(d)

About the Author

As a kid, Laura Wetsel wanted to be Nancy Drew—now she writes mysteries and thrillers. Besides being a writing sleuth, her other life chapters have included being a Russian literature academic, an English teacher in Russia, and an editor of government reports. She currently lives in Washington, D.C., with her two cats, Sasha and Ginny Wolf. Visit Laura at: laurawetselbooks.com.

Editorial Reviews

09/09/2024

It’s Hamlet among ham hocks in Wetsel’s amusing debut, which follows self-styled PI Tori Swenson as she investigates murder and double-crossing in her family’s Kansas City barbecue empire. After she’s thrown out of rehab for smuggling in opioids, Tori decides to address her family’s long-simmering traumas at an upcoming reunion. Years earlier, Tori’s father died of a drug overdose, but she’s long been convinced he was murdered by her scheming uncle Charlie. More recently, an employee at the Swensons’ barbecue joint has died under suspicious circumstances, and Tori wants to suss out whether Charlie might be responsible for that death, too. When she arrives at the reunion, however, her relatives are squarely focused on squabbling over the sale of the restaurant to a powerful conglomerate. Then Charlie dies suddenly, and Tori’s suspicions get flipped upside down—might there be somebody else trying to turn up the heat on the Swenson family? The dysfunctional Swensons leap off the page, and Tori’s investigation is endearingly sloppy, with the cringeworthy mistakes of a first-time gumshoe generating the danger that many cozies lack. This sizzling whodunit deserves a sequel.

Publishers Weekly

2024-08-03
A Kansas City detective gets drawn into an accidental-death case that forces her to confront raging personal demons as she investigates members of her estranged family.

Tori Swenson doesn’t especially want to investigate a cook’s accidental death at her Uncle Charlie’s barbecue restaurant. A backsliding opioid addict, she has enough to deal with without reopening old family wounds. But she’s also determined to exact revenge on her uncle for cutting her out of the lucrative business he stole from her father, even if it means resorting to underhanded tactics like submitting a false case request to look into the cook’s death. Under pretense of seeking reconciliation, she attends a Fourth of July barbecue at Charlie’s house only to witness her uncle’s sudden, inexplicable demise. When Tori is fired from her agency for unofficially taking on the accidental death case, she knows that someone—perhaps the killer—wants her out of the way. She presses forward, seeking answers from the rich, eccentric cousins she loves and hates, even as severed piglet heads, death threats against her beloved aunt Kat, and her own intensifying addiction to OxyContin jeopardize her investigation at every turn. With every secret Tori uncovers on her quest—infidelities, abuse, and plots to gain control of (or destroy) Uncle Charlie’s barbecue empire—she comes closer to a killer who nearly transforms her into the dead meat that represents everything Tori hates about her dysfunctional family. Quirky and entertaining, this book and its unforgettable characters, tight plotting, and clever twists make for a reading experience as suspenseful as it is satisfying.

A toothsome treat of a book by a debut mystery writer.

Kirkus Reviews