Splattered Blood by Michael A. Draper: A review
Would-be writers are always told to write about what they know. Perhaps that is why Michael Draper chose as the hero of his first mystery novel a mild-mannered insurance agent. Draper works in the insurance field and obviously knows it well and, in the course of his work, we are told that he has developed relationships and contacts with law enforcement personnel. He draws on all of that experience in plotting his tale of amateur detectives trying to solve a murder case. The murder case itself starts out as a putative suicide. Johnny Kelly, the chief of internal security for a professional basketball team, the Highlanders, is found dead in his office. There is a suicide note and at first everything seems straightforward, but when the grieving widow gets a look at a copy of that note, she points out several anomalous and suspicious facts which convince her that her husband wrote the note under duress and wrote it in such a way as to alert her to that fact. The widow, Roseanne,...