The Kind to Kill

by Tessa Wegert

Overview

A missing tourist spells trouble for Senior Investigator Shana Merchant in this page-turning twisty mystery set in an atmospheric island community with a small-town vibe.

Former NYPD detective Shana Merchant is a skilled Senior Investigator keeping New York's beautiful Thousand Islands community safe. She's a loving partner. A strong woman. A survivor.

She's also bound by blood to a serial killer. And after months of concealing the truth from the world as she hunted Blake Bram down, her secret is finally out.

Shana just wants to get on with her life and win back her community's trust. But as Alexandria Bay fills up with tourists in advance of the annual festival known as Pirate Days, a visitor goes missing, and the case threatens to destroy not just the celebrations, but what remains of Shana's reputation.

Shana's not to blame for the killer in her family, but people are starting to whisper that she attracts trouble. That A-Bay was safer before she arrived. And as the investigation deepens, Shana starts to fear that they may be right.

Because while Bram is gone, he is far from forgotten.

The Shana Merchant novels are a brilliant blend of chilling psychological thriller and gripping police procedural, set against the beautiful backdrop of the Thousand Islands.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781448310050
Publisher:	Severn House
Publication date:	08/29/2023
Series:	Shana Merchant Series , #4
Edition description:	Main
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	472,449
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Tessa Wegert is the author of the Shana Merchant series of mysteries. A former freelance journalist, Tessa has contributed to such publications as Forbes, The Huffington Post, Adweek, The Economist and The Globe and Mail. Tessa grew up in Qu bec and now lives with her husband and children in Connecticut, where she studies martial arts.

Editorial Reviews

[Wegert has] rightly earned the badge as one of the finest talents of the past three years. And The Kind to Kill is her best novel to date

The Strand Magazine

A bone-chilling mystery that crackles with suspense

Joanna Schaffhausen

Louise Penny meets Ruth Ware in this small town mystery that bubbles with secrets and intrigue

Charlie Donlea

An atmospheric, sophisticated thriller with layers upon layers of secrets

Sarah Stewart Taylor

10/10/2022

Wegert’s fine fourth crime thriller featuring Shanna Merchant (after Dead Wind) finds Merchant, now a senior investigator for the New York State Police in Alexandria Bay, N.Y., whose expertise is missing persons, continuing to try to cope with her own victimization. Merchant was once a respected member of the NYPD, until she was captured by the serial killer she’d been hunting, Blake Bram, and learned he was her own cousin. She managed to escape, but in the process, Bram fatally shot a rookie police officer, Jay Lopez. With Bram now dead, Merchant is hoping her current position will become calmer and more routine. Those hopes are dashed when tourist Rebecca Hearst vanishes after an argument with her husband. Evidence surfaces that Rebecca may have become the victim of a murderer copying Bram’s m.o., and Marchant fears that the possible homicide may be connected to the arrival in town of Lopez’s widow and her brother, who has a significant criminal record; both of them promise to make Merchant’s life “a living hell.” The complex plot and subtle characterizations elevate this above similar fare. Wegert remains a writer to watch. Agent: Marlene Stringer, Stringer Literary. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

2022-09-14
A New York state cop makes still another heroic effort to exorcize her murderous cousin from her life—and he takes a lot of exorcizing.

Years before Blake Bram became the East Village janitor who kidnapped and killed Jess Lowenthal, Becca Wolkwitz, and Lanie Miner, he was Abraham Skilton, the cousin and childhood playmate of Shana Merchant, whose love and companionship he repaid by abducting her as well—and he might have executed her, too, if he hadn’t been killed first. Even though Shana has moved to the Thousand Islands, Bram has continued to haunt her in unimaginable ways. His latest avatar is revealed by a combination of two painful experiences: the disappearance of Rebecca Hearst after an argument with her well-connected husband, car-dealership heir Godfrey Patrick Hearst III, and the publication of a vitriolic anti–Shana Merchant screed in the local paper by Gracelyn Barlowe that attracts the attention of Estella Lopez, the wife of Jay Lopez, a rookie cop who was killed trying to rescue Shana from her cousin’s clutches, and Javier Barba, Estella’s ex-con brother, both of them bent on making her life hell. It’s an unnecessary gesture, since her late cousin is already doing a bang-up job—this time through a series of copycat killings of women who share the first names of his earlier victims. The author turns the screws on Shana even tighter by making Gracelyn Barlowe the mother of Juliet Barlowe, the pregnant wife of Shana’s fellow cop Don Bogle, who soon comes under suspicion himself.

Considering who the bogeyman clearly is and remains, Wegert does an admirable job of generating mounting suspense.

Kirkus Reviews