Aftershock
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
When an earthquake strikes San Francisco, forensics expert Jessie Teska faces her biggest threat yet in this explosive new mystery from the New York Times bestselling authors of Working Stiff.
At first glance, the death appears to be an accident. The body, located on a construction site, rests under a collapsed beam. But when Dr Jessie Teska arrives on the scene, she notices the telltale signs of a staged death. The victim has been murdered. A rising star in the San Francisco forensics world, Jessie is ready to unravel the case, help bring the murderer to justice and prevent them from potentially striking again.
But when a major earthquake hits San Francisco right before Halloween, Jessie and the rest of the city are left reeling. And even if she emerges from the rubble, there’s no guaranteeing she’ll make it out alive.
With Melinek and Mitchell’s trademark blend of propulsive prose, deft plotting and mordant humor, this electrifying new installment in the Jessie Teska Mystery series offers the highest stakes yet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Melinek and Mitchell's so-so second mystery featuring San Francisco deputy chief medical examiner Jessie Teska (after 2020's First Cut) takes Teska to a construction site where a man's corpse has been found, his head crushed by a pile of pipes. Teska's preliminary observations lead her to suspect the scene was staged. After the pipes are lifted off the body, she notes the head's not surrounded by the large puddle of blood she'd expect to see if the crushing of the skull was the cause of death. At the autopsy of the victim, identified as Leopold Haring, "one of the most famous and acclaimed architects in the world," Teska discovers that a puncture wound from an unknown weapon was the actual cause of death. An earthquake and complications in Teska's romantic life add little as the lead predictably puts herself in jeopardy by investigating Haring's murder. A contrived denouement is another negative. The authors don't make Teska any sort of rival to Kathy Reichs's Temperance Brennan.
