Book Review: Dead Air

 Dead Air, by Mary Kennedy, is a book in the “Talk Radio Mystery” series. It’s not Kennedy’s first book, however. She’s written forty books, although not all of them in this series.

Here’s the back cover blurb for Dead Air:

Maggie left her clinical practice in Manhattan to move to sunny Cypress Grove, Florida, where she became the host of WYME’s On the Couch with Maggie Walsh. From codependent wives to fetish friends, all the locals love her show, but Maggie is not fond of all of its occupational hazards.

Threats start pouring in against one of the station’s special guests, self-styled New Age prophet Guru Sanjay Gingii. And when on the threats becomes a deadly reality, Maggie’s new roommate, Lark, is surprisingly the prime suspect. Maggie has to prove lark innocent while dealing with a killer who needs more than just therapy.

Even though the protagonist, Maggie Walsh, is a psychologist, in this book, she dishes out little advice. She does, however, get immediately involved in the murder mystery. She’s determined to prove Lark innocent, even though Lark looks quite guilty and the detective out to arrest Lark looks quite delicious.

After several near misses on her own life, Maggie teams up with her mother, a B-movie actress who remembers all her parts and lines from TV and movies, even the gigs she didn’t actually appear in. Together, they’re something of a hoot. Even more important, they’re the yin and yang of a good detective team.

Dead Air is a fast and well-written read. I liked that Maggie, with her mother’s assistance, solves the crime. Although there’s a good-looking officer investigating the murder, he doesn’t step in and take the lead. It’s Maggie all the way.

Kennedy includes enough possible suspects to keep the reader guessing. She also takes the reader from the little town of Cypress Grove to South Beach Miami, from the radio studio where Maggie hosts her show and interviews people to a creepy trailer in a run-down trailer park.

She kept me turning pages. I give Dead Air by Mary Kennedy a Hel-Lo!, ‘cause she’s a new-to-me author and one I’ll look for again.

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FTC Disclaimer: This book was autographed and sent to me by the author, but that’s not why I’m recommending it, nor did it influence my review. I read and reviewed it because Maggie, the protagonist, and I are a lot alike. Maggie is young and beautiful. Okay, we’re not so similar there. Maggie has a talk show and I have kids, so we both have folks telling us their problems. Maggie has a cop who suspects her of murder. I have a husband who suspects I know how to cook (but doesn’t have proof yet). Maggie has a mother who’s a little off kilter, but fun loving and a pretty good partner in crime solving. I have friends who are fun loving, off kilter, and, if I asked them to break into a ratty trailer guarded by snarling dogs the way Maggie asked her mother, they’re run like hell…to get flashlights, mace, and wine.