Review
Leigh Girard, a former Chicago teacher and now a reporter for the Door County Gazette, has moved into a friend's trailer for the summer with her dog but without her boyfriend, poetic Gazette editor Jake, who's taken off for parts unknown. Now she's drawn into the search for a missing girl. After interviewing wealthy, arrogant land developer Russell Margaris and his wife when their daughter Janell, 15, goes missing from their vacation home, Leigh joins the search. Shortly thereafter, she helps find a body in the woods near the Mink River. The strangled girl, Janell's friend Stephanie Everson, had just admitted to Leigh that she was covering up Janell's secret romance with an unknown man. The next to die is a college student working on an endangered-butterfly project in an area Margaris is set to develop. The purple ponytail holder wrapped around each girl's finger points to a common culprit. Leigh's determined sleuthing brings her a series of cryptic notes, apparently from the killer. Eventually she identifies Janell's lover, a 19-year-old who's arrested for statutory rape and then murder. The police are indifferent to Leigh's theories, but certain that the lover is not the killer, she keeps digging until she finds an answer in the past.
Leigh's second (Destroying Angels, 2006) is fast-paced and literate, with a strong protagonist and a puzzle that keeps you guessing. --Kirkus Review, January 1, 2009
What an exciting story! I could not put this book down. I am familiar with Door County and found myself back there as I read DEATH'S DOOR. Lukasik's imagery was brilliant. She makes the reader feel both the denseness of the forests and the currents of the bay. The water scenes are especially breath-taking. The reader can see, smell and touch the surroundings of Door County as Leigh sees them. This story is especially appealing to me because it is written in the first person. Narrator Leigh Girard tells her story and draws her readers into this intense mystery. Lukasik uses a flashback/flash forward technique to further enhance her tale. Several chapters flash back twenty-three years to a murder in Chicago. Then, the reader is brought forward to Door County and reporter Leigh Girard's investigation of multiple local strangulation murders. Breast cancer survivor Leigh Girard follows some literary clues left by someone. Is it the killer? Leigh's battle with cancer and her battle with multiple other demons made this a gripping and unusual reading experience. Narrator Leigh kept me wondering until the last page who the real demons were. All the characters are so well drawn. Lukasik is a brilliant new writer. This is the second book in the Leigh Girard mystery series I am looking forward to reading many more of her books. Leigh Girard is a fascinating survivor.
- Maureen Bouffard --I Love A Mystery, April/May 2009
