Justice For Jessica – Alretha Thomas

I was fortunate to receive this novel as an Advance Reader Copy, in exchange for an objective review.

Stacey and Jessica are best friends and have been since high school. Although Jessica has married up and now lives a lavish lifestyle, she appears to remain true to her early friendship. Stacey oftens spends overnights with Jessica when her husband is away, and as this book opens, Stacey awakens and finds her best friend dead in her bed in the guest room.

Rachel Storme is a homicide detective for the local police department. On a leave of absence of her choosing after a killer was allowed free due to compromised evidence, Rachel isn’t sure if she wants to return to police work. Then a quick favor for a colleague sucks her right in to Jessica’s murder investigation – just like that, Detective Storme is back.

As with any murder, there are the obvious suspects and like most novels, the killer ends up being someone you don’t suspect. The story line was good, but some of the dialogue just didn’t fit – the relationship between Rachel and Stacey for example. Also, and I know I was reading an uncorrected proof, there is once scene where Stacey calls 9-1-1- to report something, but when she hangs up, she says goodbye to Rachel. Not how it works at all. In any event, it was a good storyline, the author just needs a bit more insider knowledge of how investigations work.

Jessica gets killed during the night with her best friend, the mousey, overweight Stacey Sullivan just down the hall. Enter detective Rachel Storme who is ready to exchange her gun and badge for a gardener’s hat and hoe. Storme agrees to help solve the case and the two women become friends. There are plenty of suspects each with good reasons to want to murder Jessica, who was keeping quite a few secrets of her own.

I enjoyed this book, and found the pace kept me turning the pages. I wanted to slap Stacey numerous times throughout the book for being so gullible, but then I thought about it and abusive relationships play on those weaknesses. Overall a good murder mystery with solid characters.

Let me start by saying that book cover is creepyyyyyyy

Justice for Jessica
(Detective Rachel Storme Series, Book 1)

This is another book for me, that it's the first time I have read anything of this author. What a great interesting read that turned into.

justice for Jessica by Alretha Thomas.
Detective Rachel Storme has a murderer to find. someone killed Jessica James and her best friend Stacey Sullivan found her body. with lots of suspects will they find the murderer? who could it be?
an absolutely fantastic read loved the story and the characters. although I didn't like georgetta at all. I had one suspect then another very hard to guess who it was. I was gripped from start to finish. this is a must read and I would highly recommend this book. 5*.