Grim Finale

Liz Rooney Mystery #6

by Dorothy P. O'Neill

One afternoon during play practice, the dramatics teacher at Manhattan's prestigious Chadwick Academy, Marva Malin is found strangled and laying in a pool of blood on the auditorium floor, having been thrown over the balcony rail. Liz Rooney, an assistant to the coroner, is on the scene, listening to the faculty's conversations and trying to find clues for her fiancé, NYPD homicide detective Ike Eichle. For all her efforts, she is kidnapped by terrorists, members of an underground al Qaeda cell in Manhattan. While held hostage for the release of their leader who is imprisoned in Iraq by the U.S. military, Liz discovers a link between one of the terrorists and the school murder. With the U.S. government's refusal to negotiate with terrorists, Liz fears her time is running out, but a bizarre stroke of luck leads to her rescue and the capture of the terrorists. The information Liz picked up while captive proves useful to Ike, helping him eliminate the murder suspects one by one until the killer is caught.

249 pages, Hardcover

First published August 31, 2006

About the author

Dorothy P. O’Neill is a native of Staten Island, New York, and is now living in Greensboro, North Carolina. She wrote a weekly newspaper column for the Staten Island Register for eight years and had numerous poems and light verse published in Good Housekeeping, The Ladies Home Journal, and other leading women’s magazines under the name Dorothy Barlow. Her verses now appear regularly in Woman’s Day magazine.

Reviews

[Sally Lindsay-briggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grim Finale was a cozy mystery, rated somewhere between a G-PG. Liz helped her fiancé solve the murder of a drama teacher. In the process she is kidnapped by terrorists and they attempted to nab her a second time. The story was fairly well written but it just seemed a bit cheesy.