Friday, September 7, 2012

The Girl Next Door by Brad Parks


The Girl Next Door by Brad Parks

New Jersey reporter Carter Ross works for the Newark Examiner-Eagle.  (The writer is a reporter with the Star-Ledger so you can tell what he’s really talking about here.)  He’s an investigative reporter which means he is at liberty to pick and choose his own stories most of the time.  He’s intriuged by the obituary for a newspaper delivery person who has died young, so he attends her funeral to write about her.  Since she delivered the paper he works for he thinks it only fitting.  At the funeral he learns that she died in a hit and run accident (should have read the crime blotter in his own paper a little more closely) and one of the deceased’s relatives wants Ross to look into who killed her sister.  Did a drunk driver kill the delivery person?  Or was it murder?

Told in a sarcastic and witty style with plenty of New Jersey landmarks thrown in this is a great quick read.  The mystery is good but he giggles are better.  If you’re in the mood for something on the lighter side this is a good pick.