Lauren Carr

Reviewed by Narayan Radhakrishnan, New Mystery Reader

A Small Case of Murder is a GRAND case of murder. Following a style, reminiscent of that of Lisa Scottoline, and David Rosenfelt, Lauren Carr in her debut novel A Small Case of Murder, delivers a powerful and strong detective- legal thriller that has all the makings of a Hollywood movie.

The novel starts with a prologue set in the Seventies, wherein we see Lulu Jefferson, a sort of beatnik singer being murdered. Who the murderer is, we don’t know. The action now shifts to 2004, and Josh Thornton, the protagonist, a JAG Lawyer coming back home to West Virginia. Recently widowed, and in the wrong side of forties, Josh has to look after his 4 children. While cleaning the attic the children get hold of a bunch of letters, and one of the letters, is one addressed to Josh’s mother, from Lulu Jefferson, - and the letter is dated May 8th 1970, the day on which both parents of Josh were killed in an accident. The letter opens a whole new can of worms. Lulu describes a dead body in the letter, and later she says that she found the same person in flesh and blood at a later date. Josh is intrigued and he launches into an investigation, about the strange dead body. Then a couple of murders take place in this sleepy town, and Joshua is appointed special prosecutor to solve the crimes. Josh finds an inexplicable link between the 30-year-old dead body case and the present murders and what follows is tense and pulsating action culminating in an exciting finish.

The protagonist is a fine blend of Perry Mason, and Sherlock Holmes (in particular The Hound of Baskerviles). The novel is a grand read...all the loose ends... are well interlinked in the end- at least for a couple of chapters, I felt that I was going through a book version of Santa Barbara or Bold and the Beautiful or something of that sort. For a debut work, A Small Case of Murder is a grand, grand read.

Joshua Thornton is a hero most sublime. Midwest Book Review, Shelley Glodowski, Senior Reviewer

Lauren Carr is a resident of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, bringing to mind the song The Ode to Billy Joe. Lauren's career has spanned having her work produced for television, the theater, and published books, and she obviously knows her way around the act of writing.

Chester, West Virginia is a small but interesting town. Joshua Thornton, now a retired JAG lawyer, grew up there with his cousin, Dr. Tad MacMillan, who was known for his sexual exploits and experimentation with drugs and alcohol. But that was then, and now Tad and Joshua are reunited, with Josh's five children from his now deceased wife, Valerie. Both he and Tad mourn the women they loved, but Tad's situation is more complicated. Only the original doctor in town whose office Josh has bought, Doc Wilson, knows the secrets of the town's inhabitants and the ultimate reason for Tad's heartbreak. Reverend Orville Rawlings is the richest minister around, and at one of his services Joshua is attacked by the minister's outlaw daughter, Vicki, who has a gun and an unreasonable hatred of Tad:

"As the man and girl hit the floor, the bullet discharged from the barrel, struck one of the hanging lamps, and sent a shower of glass down onto the shocked congregation. The bullet continued its flight upward until it planted itself into one of the oak panels high above the church members."

There is nothing more fun for a mystery reader than a tale of murder surrounding an overly pious preacher with too much money and not enough oversight. In this case, it takes a shrewd ex-military lawyer in the person of the delectable Joshua Thornton to sort through decades of murder and injustice. Carr weaves an extraordinary story that is gripping and crafted at the highest level to entertain the reader with its touch familial centerpiece amidst evil and chaos.

Joshua Thornton is a hero most sublime, and his five children provide the perfect backdrop for a man searching for the next plateau. Chester, West Virginia is every town, and its inhabitants are fun and pivotal to the plot. The story is complicated, and Lauren Carr feints and thrusts to bring her various villains to the forefront. This is a fine tale for a beach blanket read.

A Complex Murder Mystery. Debbie Lee Wesselmann (the Lehigh Valley, PA) – Top 500 Reviewer

In Lauren Carr's carefully constructed murder mystery, the protagonist Joshua Thornton, a JAG attorney on leave to care for his five children after the death of his wife, arrives in the small town of Chester, West Virginia, the place where he grew up and where he hopes his children will find stability. He is hoping for a quiet life as a single father. However, before the boxes have even been unpacked, his children uncover a mystery letter that suggests Chester might not be as idyllic as Joshua thought. Before long, Joshua is named as a special prosecutor to investigate a series of murders that may or may not be related to the letter written decades before. Is there a connection between the disappearing body that Joshua's parents stumbled upon and the charismatic Reverend Rawlings? What about the drug peddling of Rawlings' granddaughter Vicki and the addicted pharmacist? Who is Amber, and why does she know so much? And how does the deceased town doctor, the current sheriff, and Joshua's cousin Tad fit into the mystery?

…Carr proves herself an adept storyteller, juggling motives, clues, relationships, and red herrings like a pro. ...What a murder mystery it is! Even though readers will figure out crucial elements prior to the final revelation, there isn't enough time to contemplate all the twists Carr provides. The rush to the end is breathless.

… Carr's talent is obvious. For mystery lovers, this is a fun, rollicking ride... Hang onto your first editions of this book, as Carr has the ability to break into future best seller lists.

Everything a great mystery novel should be - and then some. Daniel Jolley "darkgenius"  Top 50 Amazon Reviewer (Shelby, North Carolina USA)

It takes a special kind of writer to really pull off a good mystery without pulling any punches, taking any shortcuts, or losing the reader's commitment all the way up to the final page. Lauren Carr is one of those special writers. A Small Case of Murder is like a good mystery on steroids; everything starts out simple, with a mysterious little murder committed decades ago, but the plot soon becomes increasingly complex and increasingly fascinating. This is not a simple mystery - not by a long shot. I don't know if I have ever read a mystery with as many twists and turns along the way: you've got a 50-year string of murders covering two sides of the globe, all kinds of personal secrets being held close by the innocent and guilty alike, rampant speculation and discoveries about blood ties and familial relations among a fairly large subset of people, and plenty of characters worthy of your suspicion as the story unfolds. I did have to stop at times, re-read a sudden revelation, and pause to work out how this new piece of evidence could possibly be and what it might mean, yet Carr never allows the complexity of the web she is weaving to leave the reader by the wayside, lost and confused. You do have to be an active participant in the drama, though, if you are going to keep yourself from tripping up over all the loose ends that slowly come together on the pathway to the truth.

After the death of his wife, Joshua Thornton has left the Navy (where he worked as an investigator and prosecutor) and returned home to West Virginia to raise his five children. Cleaning out the old house, he finds an unopened letter mailed to his parents on the very day they died in an accident; here Josh learns that his parents and another couple discovered a dead body on their prom night only to find it gone when they got the sheriff out to the site. This letter soon becomes an important piece of evidence in an investigation of mammoth proportions; the story of the dead body his parents found becomes much more than the "small case of murder" Josh's son initially proclaims it to be. The criminal activity all centers on a prominent local preacher and his family; this man of the cloth and his children are already known to be the local drug lords (although no one has been able to prove it yet), but the onus of drug peddling pales in comparison to the body count that soon begins to stack up. I won't say any more about the plot. I really couldn't begin to do justice to this complex story, nor would I want to take a single iota of enjoyment from future readers of this riveting mystery.

Carr handles all of her characters in a wonderfully subtle manner, forcing us to consider each one a possible suspect at some point - and there are plenty of loosely connected crimes to go around. Of course, the murders of several potential suspects tend to shorten the reader's list as one goes along. Still, I went into the concluding chapters with little idea of how everything would actually play out - although I certainly had my suspicions (and was actually right on the money in a couple of cases, I'm quite proud to say). Then, just when you think everything is out in the open, Carr drops another little bomb right on you. Stepping away from the story now, I can only marvel at the beauty of Carr's intricate plot - and I mean marvel of the jaw-dropping kind.

Have I mentioned how addictive this story is? You might need to set your clock before picking this novel up, as you really can almost immediately immerse yourself completely in these pages. Carr never takes her foot off the gas, either, as you are bombarded time and time again with new crimes, new evidence, new bombshells, new suspicions. What I am essentially saying here is this: A Small Case of Murder is one of the most absorbing, fascinating, complex, and impressive mystery novels I have ever read. If you love a good mystery, you will absolutely go nuts over Lauren Carr's A Small Case of Murder.

A small case of murder but a great big murder mystery novel. Lawrance M. Bernabo – Top 10 Amazon Reviewer

I had selected "A Small Case of Murder" as the novel I was going to read on my flight back home this week, although I assumed I would probably not finish it by the time I got back to the Zenith City. That was before the plane broke and the flight was delayed 12 hours, which gave me plenty of time to finish Laura Carr's mystery. More importantly, the novel was compelling enough that I did not mind finding a different seat in the airport to read each chapter of the novel (until the final two chapters and epilogue, which I read while eating dinner and ignoring Americans winning gold medals on the television). Suffice it to say, "A Small Case of Murder" is a good read.

After a brief prologue in the Spring of 1970, the story takes place in the Summer of 2004 when Joshua Thornton moves back to his home town of Chester, West Virginia. A recent widower, Thornton has retired early from the Navy, where he was a graduate of the Naval Academy and a J.A.G. lawyer, to provide a more stable environment for his five children. While cleaning out the family home the kids find a letter written to their grandmother that has never been opened, postmarked 34 years earlier on the very day that they were killed in a traffic accident. The letter speaks to a dead body that was found--and then disappeared--from the Bosley barn. When he reads the letter and learns the author of died the same day as his parents, Thornton becomes suspicious. Coincidences are not a part of how he sees the world. Besides, having convicted an admiral, the Thornton kids are convinced their father can easily solve a small case of murder, even 34 years later.

However, the key thing here is that the title is rather ironic, because eventually our hero does not have enough fingers to count all of the dead bodies. Even when the state attorney general appoints him as a special prosecutor to solve the crimes, Thornton has his work cut out for him because one thing that has not changed in all the time he has been away from home is that the Reverend Orville Rawlings is still the biggest power in Chester, as well as the valley's drug lord. In addition to his children, who are more than willing to try and be helpful in the investigation, Thornton is aided in his endeavor by his cousin, Tad MacMillan. Now the town's doctor, MacMillan was once its legendary bad boy, and while his medical knowledge is of great help he also has more than one connection to the growing case that questions whether trusting his cousin is a good thing or a bad thing for our hero.

"A Small Case of Murder" is a complex mystery, but for a good reason, which is revealed at the end and certainly part of the fun. The best thing I liked about this book is that it takes Thornton a couple of chapters just to reveal "whodunnit," while until you get to that point you get to enjoy the intelligent conversations between the characters (there is almost as much happening interpersonally with these characters as there is in terms of solving all the murders). This is a "talking" mystery, where clues have to be unraveled and looked at from different directions to see how things might fit together. One of the other things I liked about this particular mystery was that I figured out a couple of the key pieces, and I like to think that is due more to my figuring out the clues rather than Carr telegraphing a couple of the pieces. Besides, there are so many pieces to this puzzle that you have to figure out a couple of them on your own.

… I look forward to her next mystery novel, especially if it involves the Thornton clan….

A Classic Book. mistermaxxx@yahoo.com "mistermaxxx" Top 50 Amazon Reviewer

This is one of those books that you can't put down. You find yourself caught up in it & also with all the twists & turns you just don't have any idea how things shall end up. It truly captures the mystery & pacing factory all at once. One of those Books that once you start reading it that you can't put down.