Separated at Death

by Sheldon Rusch

Overview

A middle-aged woman is found beheaded in the bedroom of her suburban home. But another shocking surprise awaits Illinois State Special Agent Elizabeth Hewitt and her partner Jen Spangler: the woman’s estranged husband is found in his home, as well—murdered in the same gruesome fashion.
 
Hewitt soon learns that this crime is not just a grisly vendetta leveled against one estranged couple. Because another estranged husband and wife have been discovered beheaded as well. And this won’t be the last. A killer’s secret ceremony has begun. And Hewitt’s been invited to stop it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440634932
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/01/2008
Series:	An Elizabeth Hewitt Mystery , #3
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	448 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Sheldon Rusch is an advertising executive as well as a yoga instructor.

Editorial Reviews

This is one great author.

New Mystery Reader

Rusch's latest serial killer has a yen for couples on the skids. A phone call takes Special Agent Elizabeth Hewitt of the Illinois State Police away from the side of her brand-new fiance, Det. Brady Richter, and to a grisly crime scene where Rita Vandermause has been decapitated with a samurai sword by a killer who has made off with her head. And that's only the beginning of this latest round of horrors, as Hewitt learns when she calls on Joe, Rita's estranged husband. Jen Spangler, the daughter of Hewitt's boss, who's filling the time between terms studying criminal justice to shadow Hewitt on the job, discovers Joe's equally headless corpse in his garden. Who might have had an interest in preventing the couple, and other couples to come, from separating, even if it meant enforcing a separation of a more radical kind? The suspects include parish priest Brian Wilson; Dr. Gerry Boccachio, a psychiatrist with a special interest in couples at risk; and the staff of Big Shoulders Marriage and Family Therapies, who seem to share an unholy interest in creative approaches to marriage (one of them has authored Learning to Love Your Inner Slut). The case hinges on the murder of a young woman who was never married, let alone separated. The elliptical investigation is nothing special, but Rusch (The Boy with Perfect Hands, 2006, etc.) certainly takes a distinctive delectation in the mechanics of serial homicide. Agent: Paula Balzer/Paula Balzer Agency

Kirkus Reviews