9 Days: A DEE ROMMEL MYSTERY

by Jule Selbo

Overview

A powerful family will stop at nothing to protect its secrets...

Famous astrologist Agnes Sants-Mekler, a member of one of Maine's elite families, pleads guilty to murder. Her gifted, pre-teen son, Zar, says she's lying and he wants Dee Rommel to prove that - in nine days.

Former policewoman Dee Rommel, not yet thirty, is dealing with a permanent, life-changing injury sustained while part of Portland's police force. Her medical leave is up; she's made a contested decision to delay her return to the department and continue working with her godfather, PI Gordy Greer. Dee discovers the police are content with Agnes Sants-Melker's confession, but her intense curiosity - and need for justice - compels her to dig deeper to find the truth. As she sifts through the evidence, misdirections, and deceptions she finds that trusting the wrong person is unraveling a more devious plot - and leading to a life-threatening confrontation.

 

9 DAYS is the thrilling second installment in the award-winning Dee Rommel Mystery series. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781950627578
Publisher:	Pandamoon Publishing
Publication date:	12/27/2022
Series:	A DEE ROMMEL MYSTERY , #2
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	318
File size:	386 KB

About the Author

Jule Selbo spent a few decades working as a screenwriter in Los Angeles and then moved, four years ago, to Portland Maine to focus on writing novels. Five have been published so far - two historical fiction Dreams of Discovery, Life of Explorer John Cabot, and Breaking Barriers, Laura Bassi's Life (Goethe Award recognition) and a mystery romance Find Me In Florence (first place Chanticleer Award for Women's Fiction). Finally ready to tackle her favorite genre, crime/mystery, she wrote 10 DAYS: A Dee Rommel Mystery listed on the 2021 top-five list of Kirkus' best crime/mysteries, nominated for a Clue Award, Maine Literary Award, received a Foreword Review Honorable Mention and the 2022 Silver Falchion Award. 9 DAYS, A Dee Rommel Mystery is the next book in the ten-part series. https://www.juleselbo.com

Editorial Reviews

★ 2022-10-31
Private eye Dee Rommel returns to investigate an apparently murderous rich family in this knotty mystery series entry.

This second outing finds Dee working for 11-year-old Zar Sants-Mekler, who wants her to prove that his mother, Agnes Sants, a wealthy heir and astrologer, didn’t kill their gardener, who was found dead of a gunshot wound in their backyard. Complicating the case is Zar’s insistence that the crime be solved in just nine days so that he and Agnes can make their Thanksgiving flight to Vienna; complicating it further is Agnes’ statement to the Portland, Maine, police in which she confessed to the murder. Dee’s crusty boss, Gordy, wants to drop this turkey, but other developments make Dee question what seems an open-and-shut case: Unknown assailants viciously beat Zar’s father, Tobias Mekler, causing him to be put into an induced coma; an acquaintance of Gordy’s, involved in questionable real estate dealings with Mekler’s company, becomes part of the mystery; and Dee’s car is vandalized by two criminals who seem vaguely mixed up with the family. Dee delves into Agnes’ astrological community and is skeptical of its claims, but Agnes’ colleague does an astrological chart that has a weird prescience. The PI also gets a fix on the odd denizens of the Sants-Mekler household, including the frosty, secretive housekeeper, Dolba; Zar’s bullying teenage brother Fletcher; and his even crueler eldest brother, Toby Junior, a charismatic but menacing practitioner of Brazilian jujitsu who’s hell-bent on selling off Agnes’ heirlooms. As Dee sorts through this tangle, she weathers nightmarish flashbacks to the crime that caused her to lose the lower part of one leg and butts heads with Robbie Donato, the handsome police detective working the murder, with whom she had a brief romantic connection before he took up with the glamorous news anchor now carrying his child.Selbo sets her yarn in an atmospheric panorama of Portland, where, hidden behind a quaint veneer, poverty is plain: “Ratty sofas weigh down broken porches. Beer and soda cans have gathered into thick piles against fractured curbs. Empty lots sport tall, brown weeds, most have trapped trash in their thorns.” Her prose is punchy and evocative, as when she describes the aftermath of Tobias’ assault, with “his bashed head splotched with coagulating globs of vital fluid.” The novel is also stocked with vivid, sharply drawn characters. Zar, in particular, is a compelling creation: a nerdy know-it-all—named after the soothsaying prophet of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra—who’s forever spouting trivia that often sounds inane (“Do you know what gout is? It’s when the joints in your body get full of too many crystals made of uric acid or something and you swell up and your big toe can hurt a lot”) but sometimes turns out to have subtler meaning. Dee herself is shown to be a complex, prickly hero living with disability and harboring a deep curiosity and empathy beneath a hard-bitten exterior. Readers will happily follow her down many rabbit holes.

A twisty, entertaining whodunit with sharp sleuthing and a lot of heart.

Kirkus Reviews