It’s winter. It’s dark and cold (or at least as cold as it ever gets at the beach on the Central Coast of California). For a few weeks, I’ve been craving one of THOSE books: the kind that grab you early on and keep you reading until you finish. And, thanks to Harper Collins/William Morrow and NetGalley, I finally got one in No Bad Deed, the debut novel by Heather Chavez.
It opens with a Northern California veterinarian, Cassie Larkin, driving home after working late. She happens to see a man assaulting a woman in a full-on physical battle, and she makes a split-second decision to jump in and help the woman. She tries to save the life of this complete stranger, and although the man gets away before he can be apprehended, he warns Cassie that her own life is basically over as he runs off.
The next night, Cassie’s husband takes their kid trick-or-treating and disappears. The parents had been experiencing some problems in their marriage (apparently unnoticed by people around them) and she had wondered if he might be having an affair. That suspicion is confirmed by his best friend, so of course she believes it. Not only that, she comes to believe that her husband’s disappearance is related to the threat from the creepy man who threatened her.
With terrific pacing and slowly advancing tension, the book follows the events as Cassie’s life starts to unravel, all because she was a Good Samaritan and saved a stranger’s life. This book grabbed me on page one and kept a steady pace all the way through, and I loved it! I didn’t predict the outcome or any of the various twists and turns in the story, but that’s not unusual for me.
One little creepy factoid was that in this book I learned (probably more than I wanted to know) about Jerusalem crickets. I looked them up, although they totally creeped me out in the story, and OMG the pictures were disgusting! Then I learned that Jerusalem cricket is just another name for POTATO BUGS…and I was even MORE creeped out.
Despite the ick factor of the bugs, I really did love it. I think Chavez is a terrific writer, and I totally cannot wait can’t wait for her next book. Five enthusiastic stars.