An eviction, a cold case and a suspicious confession stir up trouble in Truth Be Told, Hank Phillippi Ryan's third mystery featuring ace reporter Jane Ryland and her would-be beau, police detective Jake Brogan.
While Jane tries to adjust to the moment-to-moment pace of writing for the Register's website and locks horns with her unethical editor, Jake tries to determine whether the man who just confessed to the "Lilac Sunday" murder, which Jake's grandfather failed to solve 20 years ago, is the real killer. Both find their concerns sidelined when dead bodies start turning up in vacant repossessed homes. Meanwhile, mortgage officer Lizzie McDivitt scams her employer, shifting bank funds to make families nearing foreclosure appear current on their payments, and learns that her coworker and new boyfriend, Aaron, may be involved in a much less altruistic scheme. As Jake tries to bring closure to the past, Jane's low-profile story about bank customer service threatens to expose the corruption beneath the surface and puts her in the murderer's sights.
Ryan (The Wrong Girl) recasts Jake and Jane's will-they-won't-they tension (by now, they definitely have); at this point, the question is whether they'll lose their jobs if their employers discover the relationship. Peter Hardesty, a widowed lawyer involved with both the Lilac Sunday and eviction murder cases, also causes friction when he falls for Jane. Ryan keeps readers in suspense--for both the mystery and the romance--as Jake and Jane furiously chase after the truth. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads