Lazarus Files; Second Chance Supper Club

I read a lot of true crime, and this one was pretty damn disturbing. Back in 1986, newlywed Sherri, who worked as a critical care nurse in Glendale, was brutally murdered in her home in Van Nuys. Detectives theorized that it was a botched burglary attempt, but Sherri's parents were adamant that it was Sherri's husband's ex-girlfriend, an LAPD cop named Stephanie Lazarus. The lead detective assigned to Sherri's case dismissed the theory out of hand, never even speaking to Stephanie about it. In 2009, the case was reopened due to advances in DNA technology. Whoever killed Sherri viciously bit her arm and left behind enough saliva to type, and it was female DNA. Sherri's killer was a woman. The new detectives started looking into Stephanie, and were able to get a DNA sample, which matched. Stephanie went on trial and was convicted in 2012. About 3/4 of the way through the book, McGough introduced another murder: in 1988, a young woman named Cathy. I thought "My God, did this dirty cop kill *another* woman?!". No, but the reason he mentioned Cathy's case is because the last person to see her alive was an LAPD cop, and the lead detective on Cathy's case was the same one who was on Sherri's. A truly heartbreaking turn of events all the way around. It was a little redundant in places, with better editing it could have been 50 pages shorter, I thought. But it definitely kept my attention, I couldn't put it down.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked Nichole Meier's "Second Chance Supper Club". Julia is a high profile news anchor on a popular New York morning show who makes a bad blunder on a live broadcast one morning, accusing the mayor of corruption without any actual facts to back it up. Her bosses at the network are less than thrilled and tell her to take some time off while they try to fix the mess she got them into. Julia slinks to Arizona to her older sister Ginny's house. They've been estranged for the last several years, after their parents died, but Julia doesn't have anywhere else to go. Ginny was a famous chef in New York before she had to move back to Arizona to take care of their parents' estate, and now she's running a semi-illegal underground supper club out of her house (I got serious house envy reading her descriptions of it. My dream house!). Unfortunately, the supper club isn't really profitable and Ginny is on the verge of losing everything when Julia shows up on her doorstep. The ending was a little too neatly tied up in a bow for my taste, but I still enjoyed it.