A reporter and a medical examiner try to solve three murders that seem unconnected in this book by Jennifer Greer. Whit McKenna is trying to recover from losing her husband and her job at a the L.A. Times. Katie Riggs has recently been treated for cancer. When a famous actress is found murdered they begin investigating the case from different angles. Two more murders follow, and when McKenna and Riggs dig deeper they realize that all three may have been committed by one person. This book reminded me of the Rizzoli and Isles series by Tess Gerritsen. It was slow in the beginning but started to gain momentum in the second half. A solid debut novel by Jennifer Greer.

3 and 1 / 2 stars

Two very different women are very good friends in this book. News reporter Whit McKenna teams up with her friend medical examiner detective Katie Riggs to investigate the death of a well known actress. Both women are recovering from life threatening and harrowing experiences.

Niki Francis' body is found in a shallow grave near Medford, Oregon partially eaten by a bear. Who would want to kill the popular actress? Was it a case of a celebrity stalker? The surfacing of more bodies puts paid to that theory.

This is a very slow moving story. I kept stopping and going back to it. The writing was very well done and the book was easy to read. I had problems with the pacing though. I kept wanting the action to hurry up and get to it. I like that the novel starred two women who overcame adversity to carry on their lives successfully.

I want to thank NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for forwarding to me a copy of this fairly good book for me to read, enjoy and review.

In Jennifer Greer's A Desperate Place, her two main characters could not be more different: Whit, mother of two, tragically widowed, and a transplanted newspaper reporter that contrasts with Katie, cancer survivor, married to a lawyer, and a medical examiner who works for the coroner. However, it's the women's commitment to their friendship and working around their differences that makes this novel so special. Centered in Oregon, influential individuals are dying (or are they being murdered) under strange circumstances. Katie and Whit work together, each staying loyal to their professions and their friendship, to determine the cause of these strange deaths. It's a fabulous first novel, and I hope there are more adventures of Katie and Whit coming! I'm now a big fan of Ms. Greer.

This story was a little too slow for me. I really like the idea behind the story, but I just had a hard time relating to the characters and couldn’t commit. It also seemed to jump around too much between the main characters past and present without much explanation. I really wanted to like this one :(

Reporter Whit McKenna and her best friend, medical examiner Katie Riggs come together when actress Niki Francis is found dead in a shallow grave. Whit needs some support after the loss of her husband and her friend Katie provides both a shoulder, and insight into the murder. At first it seems the victim was targeted because of her celebrity status, but two more bodies put that theory on ice. Together the two friends work to uncover a killer while trying not to become victims themselves. It’s refreshing to read a book that makes women the heroes, not the targets, and while more and more books are starting to explore this dynamic, Greer does it particularly well