Thursday 27 March 2014

Book ~ "The Rich and the Dead" (2014) Liv Spector

From Goodreads ~ On New Year's Day 2015, twelve powerful, wealthy people were found dead - shot in a lavish Star Island estate. In 2018, the murderer remains at large.

As a detective and lead investigator on the case of the century, Lila Day was consumed by her hunt for the Star Island Killer. But that was before she was pushed out from the force and her life unraveled.

Years later, down on her luck and no longer a police officer, Lila is approached by mysterious billionaire Teddy Hawkins. He has a job for her, he says - solving the Star Island murders. Lila laughs. After all, how do you solve a crime when all the leads have long grown cold? The answer, Teddy tells her, is to be there before it happened. He is going to send her back in time.

With nothing left to lose, Lila travels back in time to 2014, determined to stop the Star Island killer once and for all. There's one catch: she must gather the evidence to bring the murderer to justice in her own time, without trying to save anyone. Easy enough, until she starts to care for the people who are destined to die. Now Lila must be willing to say good-bye - or risk setting into motion events that could change the future forever.

In the early hours of 2015, twelve rich people were murdered and Lila Day was the police officer assigned to the case. Three years later, despite her intense investigation, the case still hasn't been solved and Lila is no longer a cop.  She is approached by a billionaire named Teddy who has figured out a way to travel back in time.  He wants Lila to go back the fall of 2014, a few months before the murders happened, to solve the crime ... the only thing is she can't stop them from happening and he'll give her access to $100 million for her expenses.

With nothing keeping her in 2018 (she has no job or family) and this unsolved case haunting her, Lila goes back to the fall of 2014 and becomes Camilla Dayton, a rich socialite who has just moved to Miami from New York after a painful divorce.  As she gets to know the soon-to-be-murdered, she becomes part of their lives to find out why they were killed and by whom.  Just as she thinks she has it figured out, she's proved wrong and has to start racing down another path before times runs out.

This is the first book I've read by this author and I enjoyed it. I like time travel books and murder mysteries ... so how could I resist the combination of the two?  Written in third person point of view, I liked the writing style and thought the author handled the subject of time travel well.  As I was reading the book, I was tempted to skip to the end to see whodunnit but resisted ... I didn't see the ending coming and bought it.  As a head's up, the language is for mature readers.

I liked Lila.  She missed her life as a cop and really came alive again when she started investigating the murders.  The characters are rich and spoiled and it was interesting watching Lila adapt to fit in ... they all have strong distinct personalities which kept me guessing about their involvement.

I would recommend this book.

http://www.partnersincrimetours.net
I participated in this virtual book tour and received a copy of this ebook at no charge in exchange for my honest review.

2 comments:

Masshole Mommy said...

I like murder mysteries.

Omnimystery News said...

Sounds like a fun time travel mystery! Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts on it with us.