On a Quiet Street (Dr. Pepper Hunt Mysteries, Book 2) by J.L. Doucette
Release date: July 23, 2019
Subgenre: Psychological mystery
About On a Quiet Street:
When the fiancée of a prominent attorney is murdered, Dr. Pepper Hunt
joins forces again with Detective Beau Antelope of the Sweetwater County
Sheriff’s Department to search for the killer.
Prosecutor Connor Collin’S dreams are shattered when Stacy Hart is found strangled in their home a month before their wedding. He’s convinced Jack Swailes, the contractor who found the body, killed her in a jealous rage. And Jack looks guilty when he mysteriously disappears later that day.
The investigation takes a different turn when Pepper uses her clinical skills to probe below the surface of the perfect couple’s lives. Chilling secrets and sinister motives that lead back to unsolved crimes with a direct link to Stacy’s murder are finally brought to light.
Prosecutor Connor Collin’S dreams are shattered when Stacy Hart is found strangled in their home a month before their wedding. He’s convinced Jack Swailes, the contractor who found the body, killed her in a jealous rage. And Jack looks guilty when he mysteriously disappears later that day.
The investigation takes a different turn when Pepper uses her clinical skills to probe below the surface of the perfect couple’s lives. Chilling secrets and sinister motives that lead back to unsolved crimes with a direct link to Stacy’s murder are finally brought to light.
Excerpt:
At nine o’clock, a fading sunset outlined the rocky ridges of White
Mountain. On the lawn outside Antelope’s window, a row of
cottonwoods cast thick violet shadows.
Often, in the long twilight hours, a familiar, lingering melancholy
came over him. He wanted to be outside, fishing and cooking supper
on a camp stove, falling asleep on the ground, a bowl of
star-filled night sky overhead.
Instead, he was alone in the office after hours, long past the time
when the sheriff and second-shift detectives left for the day.
At quiet moments, it came to him how much his life had changed when
he joined the Sheriff ’s Department. The things he encountered each
day in his work were a constant reminder of the dark side of
humanity.
Every part of him went into his mission to fight crime—heart, mind,
and soul. If he kept up his usual pace, he would be depleted long
before his time, like the old men in town who had spent their lives
working the mines and whose bodies were now bent shells, collapsed
and useless, after giving everything to hard physical labor for
years. Would his mind suffer the same depletion if he continued to
push it to the boundaries of his capabilities?
A question he couldn’t answer: why did it take a brilliant
detective to catch a dumb criminal?
Even if he changed careers at this point, the knowledge of what his
fellow man was capable of filled his head; he was forever branded
with the true nature of the world.
Only in sleep did he get a respite from his warrior stance. On
those nights when his dreams took him to places and memories of his
childhood, the time before his work made its mark, he landed
briefly in a place of innocence. On those nights, he savored the
sweetness, the gift-wrapped beauty of the delusion.
If he didn’t watch out, he’d put himself to sleep with this
fairytale . . . and he still had work to do. Important, hands-on
policework. The best and most necessary kind of detecting, the
sheriff had taught him.
He stood and stretched.
Earlier that day, the district court judge had granted the motion
to search the Spring Grove Motel’s guest records for the previous
ninety days. Antelope had faxed the paperwork, and two hours later
hundreds of pages had come through the fax to the Sheriff ’s
Department.
On his desk, the documents waited: the guest register from the
Spring Grove Motel for the previous ninety days, as well as the
printout from the tracking app on Stacey’s phone.
Outside, the night sky was black and starless; restless clouds
rolled and tossed in the wind. He turned on the brass reading lamp
on his desk and started on the guest register.
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About J.L. Doucette:
J.L. Doucette's suspenseful first novel won the 6th Annual Beverly Hills Book Award for Mystery in 2017, the Silver Award from Independent Press for Mystery, and was a finalist in the Next Generation Book Awards. She creates fictional characters with depth and complexity that the reader can relate to easily. She lived in rural Wyoming where she encountered the stoic nature of people living small towns and on the Wind River Reservation.
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