In A Conventional Murder, we meet Rebecca Bauer, a hotel manager who is a magnet for trouble, mystery, and murder. Before she was accused by the hotel owner of taking bribes, she had thought that her life was almost perfect. She was a respected manager of a successful Boston hotel, her marriage was still a love affair, and she was surrounded by people who cared about her. She was sure that she could prove the accusation to be false, but all that changed the next morning. Her accuser, Marshall Hammersmith, the reception desk director, was murdered and she became the main suspect. To establish her innocence, she would have to find the real killer and she will need help from a friend.
Betsy Connolly, the hotel security chief, was deliriously happy about her engagement to Peter, a Boston Police homicide detective. She was prepared to help Rebecca and to ignore her feeling that the relationship with her boss had cooled, but she must hide things from her fiancé.
The hotel is disrupted, not only by the murder, but also by an unruly convention of bar tenders that keeps Rebecca and Betsy hopping.
Together they set out to catch a murderer and find themselves in danger from a killer who will stop at nothing to get away with the crime. There is no shortage of suspects. Was it someone the victim had blackmailed? Was it the receptionist who had been his sexual prey? Was it the vengeful ex-wife?
The story begins with two women finding a way back to an old friendship and ends in a violent and surprising denouement.
A Conventional Murder has humor and suspense, and is a book for readers who like puzzles, mysteries, and tales of murder. This is also a book for people who would like to know what goes on behind the scenes in a big city hotel, and who like reading about women detectives.
