Hemlock Needle

Alaska lawyer Maeve Malloy finds herself in trouble again as she faces a disbarment hearing. It stems from a case in the previous book and causes huge concern for her. In Hemlock Needle by Keenan Powell,  a friend asks Maeve to find her missing daughter. 

Esther Fancyboy walked out of a party during a blizzard and disappeared. Maeve and the boy's grandmother know Esther would never leave her son, Evan, so Maeve is positive something bad happened to her.  The police seem uninterested, treating it as another party girl getting herself in trouble, but Esther was a conscientious mother and a hard worker. 

When Maeve is called into her mentor Arthur Nelson's office, she is stunned to learn she is being accused of negligence in her previous case. She is also being sued for malpractice by the spouse of someone killed because of the outcome of the case. Maeve is devastated because she has worked so hard to overcome her alcoholism and prove she is worthy of Nelson's belief in her. 

Pushing her own issues to the back burner, Maeve sets out on the trail to find Esther. She starts with Esther's work place Neqa, a cooperative of villages in western Alaska, where she meets CEO Xander George. He says Esther worked for Turner International, a sister company. He insists Esther anazlyzed data for a water system project the companies were working on, but he claims he doesn't really know her that well.  Annoyed by the brush off, Maeve doubles down on the feeling something is fishy about Xander, Neqa and Turner International. 

When Esther's body is found frozen in the snow several days after she disappeared, Maeve's investigation leads her to fraud, deceptive business practices, a murderer and much more. An excellent look at life in Alaska.


Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher. 

Deadly Solution

When Ollie Olafson wakes up from his drunken stupor, he finds himself arrested for the murder of his homeless friend Joe.  Recovering alcoholic and once disgraced attorney Maeve Malloy is assigned to his defense. In Deadly Solution by Keenan Powell, there's more to Joe's death than meets the eye.

After Maeve's fall from grace over a trial gone bad, her investigator Tom Sinclair rescues her from the depths of alcohol, gets her into rehab and negotiates a leave of absence from her job as public defenders office. Now out of rehab and back to work with a huge chip on her shoulder and something to prove, Maeve is determined to clear Ollie.

The only problem is the case comes to trial in three weeks, hardly time to investigate and prepare. Another problem is the defendant - he doesn't remember anything about the night, but he is sure he did not kill Joe. Ollie knows he and Joe were drinking heavily and Joe was using marijuana.

But Tom discovers the tox screen performed on Joe was negative and no autopsy was performed.

Maeve decides to order a private independent autopsy and when she receives the results, it shows that Joe had a high content of several drugs in his system.

As she continues to investigate, she finds many homeless people have died in Anchorage in the past few months and that no autopsies were performed. Is there a serial killer on the loose?

An interesting mystery featuring the "throw-away" people in many towns and the lack of sympathy towards their deaths.