Catherine McLeod is an investigative journalist with the Denver Journal, and she's been covering Mathews' campaign. She is assigned to the cover the story, and a woman calls in anonymously to report that she knows who did it. In fact, after seeing a television news story shows the police at the Mathews' house, the witness also says that she can't go to the police because the killer is one of them. Catherine happens to believe the witness, but no one else does.

Soon, a game of cat and mouse begins. Catherine is eager to chase down the anonymous caller, as well as figure out which police officer the caller was referring to. To do this, she launches what amounts to her own investigation into the murder. Meanwhile, Beckman is eager to eliminate anyone who can connect the dots between her and David and begins systematically figuring out who the witness might have been and who she may have told.

THE PERFECT MURDER is fast-paced and fraught with tension. I greatly enjoy the characters and how they interact with each other. The dialogue is realistic and achieves an easy balance of "tough enough" while not being "over the top and cheesy." The one thing that bothered me is that I never got to the point where I was rooting against Beckman, although it was clear that she was a dirty cop. After thinking about this, I think it is because the book begins by painting her in a somewhat sympathetic light (being dumped by a man, being lied to, etc.) AND the book begins with a chapter about her, rather than about Catherine, which made me immediately more interested and emotionally invested in Beckman. Overall, however, I enjoyed the book and the story- telling, and I would love to read more books in this series.

Book Summary

A new Catherine McLeod mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of the Wind River mysteries. After a candidate for governor is murdered, and his estranged wife is arrested for first-degree homicide, journalist Catherine McLeod receives a call from an anonymous woman claiming she saw the real killer leave the scene of the crime but is afraid to confide in the police. To uncover the truth, Catherine must risk her career-and her life-to find the witness who can identify the candidate's murderer: Detective Ryan Beckman.