The Wedding Crasher
Crime, Female Detectives, Mystery
Nikki Stern
Samantha Tate, Book # 1
Ruthenia Press
May 8, 2019
ebook
340
English
May 14, 2019 May 19, 2019
ISBN13: 9780999548738
Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
A brunette in a bridal gown turns up in Pickett County, Tennessee, throat slit and ring finger missing. She’s the latest victim of the Wedding Crasher, a serial killer who murders women just weeks before their weddings.
Samantha Tate is Picket County’s yoga-loving, poker-playing new sheriff, a former Nashville homicide detective who struggles with her inner demons. To catch the meticulous murderer, Sam will have to follow her instincts and ignore her worst impulses. Can she stop the Wedding Crasher before another bride-to-be dies?
About the book
The Wedding Crasher begins immediately with the discovery of the body, a woman is found under a white oak, with a fairly dated wedding dress. Sheriff Samantha Tate knows that the “wedding crasher” is back. He didn’t make many casualties, “only” five, in Florida, in Georgia and then in Tennessee, but this is the second murder in the area and Samantha wants to solve the case.
With Samantha, Special agent Terry Sloan investigates, out of Tampa FBI that during the first investigation seems to have approached the new sheriff a little too much only then to return to Florida when the case became cold. Will they be able to solve it together? And what is hiding in Samantha’s past?
Wow! I must say that Samantha’s past intrigues me a lot. The book starts a little slow even though we are at the crime scene right away and I liked it a lot. The fact of starting immediately as if to say “let’s get right to the facts and let’s not get lost in useless things” (thank you very much, lately I am reading books that are too long on facts that have nothing to do with the story just to write more pages) I really like it.
The chapters are short which is a plus and after a third of the book the facts follow one another with a speed that I like and so I started to appreciate it more (meaning that I didn’t want to stop reading to understand how it ended, which didn’t occurre at the beginning).
I really like the author’s style, as I said, it presents short chapters that you can read quickly, so it makes you want to read more (in my opinion, of course) and I like that the book is divided in four seasons even if, at first, I didn’t understand why, well, I still don’t understand it because there is just one page with only the name of the season on it, but I do understand why the story lasts a year.
The killer surprised me and I have to say that the last chapters, from his discovery to his capture, I read them all in one breath and it is the speed that I like.
At the beginning of this review I had two questions but right now I only remember one… (Laura why you never write down what you think??), but I probably can’t give an answer because I was distracted… It seems to me that the killer missed a year of killing, but I can’t find an answer in the book about why. Now, I don’t know if I invented it myself, if I don’t remember it correctly or if it’s really so, but I can’t find an answer. Does anyone remember?
I also like that the book takes place in Tennessee because it is a state in which I never went with my readings, which will change in the next book (at least from what was said in this), but it doesn’t matter. At least I visited this place once.
As I said I like the mystery about the shooting in which Samantha was a victim, I like that Terry is interested and I like that they are going to start a journey together and therefore I really hope to find both in the next book that I will surely read.
The Wedding Crasher by Nikki Stern
on Tour June 1-30, 2019
Read an excerpt:
The dead woman lay in the clearing like a macabre version of Sleeping Beauty. She was dressed in a long-sleeved, high-necked ivory gown, set off by luminescent pearl drop earrings and a matching necklace that almost hid the dried blood around her throat. Her head rested on a satin pillow, her silky walnut hair spread behind her like a fan. The right hand held a bouquet of wilted flowers and rested on her chest underneath the left, absent the fourth finger. The ring finger.
Sheriff Sam Tate stood to one side of the grim tableau, arms folded, and took it all in: the victim; the tall white-haired man who knelt by the body; the deputy who walked the scene in throwaway boots, snapping pictures; the pale young man in running gear sitting on a rock, head almost to his knees; the uniformed officer who squatted beside him.
Sam had dressed in her standard uniform of pressed black slacks and a spotless white shirt. A shaft of early-morning sun bounced off the polished badge at her left breast pocket. On her right wrist, she wore a utilitarian watch. Three small studs twinkled along one earlobe, her single visible concession to a rebellious streak. She’d pulled her unruly dark locks into a tight braid. Ray-Bans shielded her green eyes, though not the line that formed between her brows.
One of the victim’s low-heeled white pumps had dropped off to reveal a slim ankle in hosiery. Stockings, not pantyhose, held up by an old-fashioned garter. Sam didn’t need to look.
He’s back, she thought, adding a curse for good measure.
***
Excerpt from The Wedding Crasher by Nikki Stern. Copyright 2019 by Nikki Stern. Reproduced with permission from Nikki Stern. All rights reserved.
Author Bio:
Nikki Stern is the author of the inspirational HOPE IN SMALL DOSES, a 2015 Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal finalist, and the thriller THE FORMER ASSASSIN, a 2018 Kindle Book Review category finalist. Her essays are included in three anthologies and she co-authored the interactive Café Noir murder mystery series, published by Samuel French. Eight of her short stories have been published in various online journals and she was a Mark Twain Royal Nonesuch finalist for her short story “Long Away and Far Ago.” Nikki is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America.
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Your review has me intrigued. I need to read this book and soon!
Yes, I loved it!! I really recommend it
Hi. Thanks for the review! I’m so glad you enjoyed it. I hope to bring the next book out by summer of next year.
Thanks for stopping by! I’m looking forward to read it and I truly hope it will be translated in Italian so every Italian who doesn’t know English can read it, too