A trail of lies A mystery

Logan's so-so third Jazz Ramsey mystery (after 2020's The Secret of Bones) opens with Jazz, an assistant administrator at Cleveland's St. Catherine's School for Girls, waking up to an early morning call from Kim, the mother of her police detective boyfriend, Nick Kolesov. The woman, in an alcohol-fueled tirade, demands that Jazz come to her house immediately, because there's a dead man in her yard. When Jazz can find no body, she puts Kim's claims down to too much bourbon. However, when a convicted murderer recently released on parole is found dead in a park near Kim's house, Jazz and the police begin to take an interest in Kim's story. Between preparing for the school dance and training her Airedale pup, Wally, to become a cadaver dog, Jazz investigates and discovers a shocking secret that will change her life and Nick's. Uneven pacing, one-dimensional characters, and doings at the school that serve merely as padding make this a lesser effort. Cozy readers who are fond of dogs should be somewhat satisfied. Agent: Gail Fortune, Talbot Fortune. (May)

Hard living and alcohol add up to a nightmare for a woman with a checkered past. Jazz Ramsey is back in a relationship with her boyfriend, police officer Nick Kolesov, whose alcoholic mother, Kim, is a constant thorn in her side. Late one night Kim phones Jazz, claiming that Nick is dead in her yard. Even though no one is dead in the yard, Kim continues to maintain that she killed someone. While calming Kim down, Jazz discovers some old pictures that may prove the key to solving a murder, though not the one Kim thinks she committed. Nick, who's often called away to work cases, knows how unreliable his mother is. Jazz, though irritated, still feels some responsibility to investigate Kim's wild story, but Wally, the cadaver dog she's training when she's not working her administrative job at a girls school, doesn't alert in Kim's yard. When a body is found in a park, Jazz returns to Kim's backyard with her late father's retired tracking dog, Gus, who does alert, suggesting that a body was there after all. The identification of the dead man as one of Kim's many lovers and possibly Nick's father makes it harder for Jazz to ignore Kim's claims as alcohol-fueled dreams. Busy as she is at St. Catherine's Prep, she's determined to investigate, and when she uncovers a complicated web of lies, she gets death threats. The apparently levelheaded heroine makes some rash decisions en route to unmasking a surprising killer. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.