Final Design

by Noreen Gilpatrick

Police detective Kate MacLean has finally landed a homicide case all her own, one her boss calls a "nice, ladylike murder," with no blood, no violence - just a neat overdose of morphine slipped into a cup of tea. Found slumped over her desk, the dead woman is a Liz Taylor look-alike named Catherine Fletcher, one of four partners in a new and struggling Seattle graphic arts studio. With a hundred-thousand-dollar life insurance policy on the victim held by the business, Kate figures it's a lead pipe cinch that one of the other partners is guilty. No doubt the Captain will be proved right. This is a ladylike murder for a lady cop - one corpse, one killer, one quick arrest.
But that's before Kate and her partner, Sam Morrison, discover that nothing about the lovely Catherine Fletcher adds up - from her finances to her love life. Then another dead body is found at the office, and working nine-to-five in Seattle starts to look like a high risk profession. Before long her gut instinct tells her the pieces of this deadly puzzle are held together by hate and revenge, but what is the big picture? How many bodies will complete a killer's final design? And will a pretty policewoman's death be its final macabre touch?

Genres: Mystery

384 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Linda]

Kate MacLean, a Seattle police detective, is the first female detective on the force, with lots of chauvinist pigs around to get in the way of her detecting. Sam, her partner in her first case (FINAL DESIGN) and an under¬standing sort, is about to remarry his divorced wife, and has requested desk duty and regular hours. Kate misses his moral support and the Mexican lunches they used to enjoy together, and the office politics of their particular police department figure large in the story. Kate is called to a park where the body of Sarah Taft, a high school senior, all round good student, a nice girl who no one can say anything bad about, has been found. Sarah attends Woodhaven Academy, an ultra conservative Christian school where the students' lives are controlled every minute of every day. During the autopsy, it is discovered that Sarah is pregnant an unheard of thing because Woodhaven students are not allowed to date or be with boys at all, and are never alone, at home or at school. Then the body of the boy some think is the baby's father is found in the same place and circumstances as Sarah's. This is a good study of mind control as well as a compelling mystery with an interesting between the members of the Seattle police, which I'm sure will continue in her future Kate McLean stories. Goddard, the newly announced chief of Kate's division, had been her first partner, a partner from Hell, until Sam became her partner.

[LJ]

SHADOW OF DEATH - Okay
Gilpatrick, Noreen - 3rd in series

Two biblical quotations that provide the title and a religious point of reference preface this police procedural. King County (Washington State) police detective Kate MacLean is stymied by the administrators of a strict Christian school as she tries to investigate the murder of a student. In the meantime, the killer of beautiful, "perfect" Sarah Taft bides his (or her) time.

I didn't like this as well as the previous two.

[Jessica]

I give Gilpatrick points for sending the end of her story in a different direction than I expected with regard to the whodunit, but other parts of the story were far too easy to guess.

[Trish Derrick]

I loved this book. The mystery and having lived and been to many of the places in this book I found fun

[Janine]

Fantastic - I really didn't know the murderer until the end which is rare!