Author: Nora Peterson

ISBN: 1-59431-353-9

Nora Peterson’s Past Imperfect is a delightful mystery that deserves to be put front and center on one of those display tables just inside the door of Barnes and Noble. I hope we see more Casey McCloud mysteries in the near future.

Casey McCloud is a tangled character. She is a widow, and has difficult family relationships. Her work history as a journalist and, more recently, doing electronic searches for a private investigator is…less than stellar. In fact, she just got fired.

A friend, Angie Drummond, hired Casey’s firm to do some investigating into her past, and now Angie is dead. With no job and no immediate plans, Casey goes to Boston to complete what she feels is an obligation, by completing the investigation into Angie’s past. Unfortunately, Casey is not a PI, and she quickly finds herself in over her head. An old friend, Jack Pierce, joins her in an investigation that quickly involves a decades-long series of murders and a prominent Boston family.

Peterson’s major characters are real people that you can relate to. She paces the story well, so that you want to keep reading right through to the end. The end is a complete surprise, and it leaves you feeling that, of course, you should have seen it coming. Past Imperfect is the perfect rainy afternoon mystery.

At the end of the book, Casey is doing a little freelance writing and thinking of maybe going into business for herself doing missing persons searches. She doesn’t want to do criminal investigations, though, because “some things are best handled by the police.” Sparks flew between Casey and Jack in Past Imperfect, but their future is uncertain.

I hope Casey and Jack continue to cross each other’s paths, and that murder continues to work its way into Casey’s life. That sounds macabre, but I want to spend another rainy afternoon reading another Casey McCloud mystery.

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