Where the Bodies Are Buried (Jeri Howard Mysteries) [Hardcover]

Janet Dawson (Author)

Book Description

Series: Jeri Howard Mysteries | Publication Date: October 13, 1998

Welcome to Corporate America. Where the CEOs make millions and the peons get squeezed. Where power corrupts and a seven-figure bonus may be worth killing for. Where even San Francisco P.I. Jeri Howard finds herself dangerously outmaneuvered--and in treacherous company.

When Jeri Howard's new client, Rob Lawter, takes a header through his living room window soon after he's hired her, Jeri is in a quandary. Lawter, a paralegal at Bates, Inc., a food-processing firm, had received a threatening anonymous note, sent because he was about to blow the whistle on some serious corporate cover-up.

Since Jeri has already cashed the check, she feels she owes her dead, probably murdered, client his money's worth. So she goes undercover in Bates's legal department, determined to expose Lawter's killer. What Jeri finds is that murder tops this corporation's agenda, as employees pay the ultimate price to keep a deadly health scare out of the media.

This is a novel very much of our times--drawn from today's headlines about food safety and contaminated product recalls. In Where the Bodies Are Buried, Janet Dawson pits Jeri Howard against an all-to-real menace that threatens us all--and the result is a purely frightening read.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Last time out (Witness to Evil, 1977), Oakland, Calif., PI Jeri Howard dealt with Nazis old and neo. This time, the villains are corporate fat cats. Paralegal Rob Lawter has paid Jeri a retainer for unspecified services, then has died from a fall shortly before blowing the whistle at Bates Inc., the food processing company where he worked. Certain Rob was killed but unsure what he wanted her to do and determined to earn the retainer, Jeri takes a temporary job in Bates's legal department. She also befriends Rob's grieving niece, Robin, who hates her mother's lover, Leon Gomes, a Bates factory manager and confidant of executives at Rittlesteon & Weper, which recently bought out the Bates family. Although Jeri snoops enough to uncover plans to move Bates to El Paso and fire most employees, it's only near the end of the novel that she learns why Rob was murdered. Jeri is an engaging narrator, and Dawson evokes the feel of life in the Bay Area. But, with the narrating Jeri reporting seemingly every folder transferred and every snatch of overheard conversation, Dawson's narrative, with a bit too much of muck-racking and a smidgen too little of accomplished storytelling, never attains a pace required to sustain proper suspense.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Jumped, fell, pushed? Whichever the case, Rob Lawter has certainly gone out the window of his fifth-floor apartment. And he is certainly dead. So once again there's Oakland p.i. Jeri Howard, back for a seventh outing, in something of a quandary: this time, her client, now deceased, had retained her to perform a service he had not got around to specifying. Well, its not much of a quandarybecause, of course, Rob was pushed, and Jeri won't rest until justice is served. But there's not much to go on. At their first and only meeting, Rob, a poor but honest paralegal at Bates, Inc., the food-processing giant (cereal, beans, dairy products), had been nervous, obviously worried. He'd told her little, promised to say more in a day or so when he was surer of himself. He had, however, produced for her scrutiny this highly unfriendly note: ``Back off if you know what's good for you.'' So with her client suddenly (and suspiciously) posthumous, Jeri decides that something is as rotten at Bates as it ever was in Denmark. Rob, she's convinced, was a wannabe whistle-blower trying to muster the courage. But to reveal what? Undercover, she goes, in Bates's legal department, sniffing away in file cabinets and computer banks. Before long, she discovers two varieties of contaminationone emanating from a bacteria-laden shipment of the companys ice cream, the other from the smelly conspiracy to cover that up. Standard for this series (A Credible Threat, 1997, etc.). Which is to say the puzzle is decently presented and legitimately solved, but Jeri's as unrelievedly bland as Bates vanilla. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 279 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st edition (October 13, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449001989
• ISBN-13: 978-0449001981
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,694,494 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

In elementary school, Janet Dawson wrote mysteries in longhand on lined binder paper, influenced by those blue-backed Nancy Drew books she devoured. Now Janet writes about private investigator Jeri Howard. Her first book, Kindred Crimes, won the St. Martin's Press/Private Eye Writers of America contest for Best Private Eye Novel, and was nominated for Shamus, Anthony and Macavity awards. Other books include Till The Old Men Die, Take A Number, Don't Turn Your Back On The Ocean, Nobody's Child, A Credible Threat, Where The Bodies Are Buried, A Killing At The Track, and the latest entry in the series, Bit Player.

Janet was born in Oklahoma and grew up in Colorado. With a journalism degree from the University of Colorado, she worked as a newspaper reporter, then joined the Navy. An enlisted journalist, she wrote news and features in public affairs offices in Guam and Pensacola, FL. As an officer, her duties took her to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lives in Alameda. Janet has a master's degree in history from California State University East Bay and can't think of anything she wants to study enough to go back to grad school. She currently works at the University of California.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A modern day mystery of the famous Who Dun It kinda novel., October 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Where the Bodies Are Buried (Jeri Howard Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

Private Investigator, Jeri Howard is out to find the real cause of her present, but just past away client, Rob Lawter. She goes undercover, travels, worked double shifts to find the answer to how Mr. Lawter died and what was the cause of it? This book is packed with gradually piled on suspense that can't exactly keep me interested. There seems to be a lack of description of the characters and the settings. Or maybe I'm just slow. It does include accurate information when it comes to describing the cities mentioned in the story, San Francisco and Oakland. Could get a higher rating, it just doesn't have what I want in a mystery novel. I would highly recommend this to San Franciscans and Oakland-ERs.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great Jeri Howard Bay Area mystery, September 20, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Where the Bodies Are Buried (Jeri Howard Mysteries) (Hardcover)

Though he gives her a retainer to hire Oakland private investigator Jeri Howard, Rob Lawter tells the sleuth to wait until he gives her more details before she begins working for him. However, he did show her a threatening note and that he planned to blow the whistle on Bates Inc., the food processing firm he works for as a paralegal. Before he can tell her what he wants her to do, Rob apparently jumps to his death form a fifth story window.

Since Jeri cashed his check, she feels she owes her now deceased client his money's worth. She takes an undercover job in the legal department of Bates where she hopes to quickly ferret out the identity of killer. Unbeknownst to the detective is what is lurking in the background, something that will turn out to be a more menacing threat to society.

WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED is a frightening Bay Area who-done-it because the story line reads so genuine that consumers will be leery to eat or drink anything processed; diets will boom across America. Jeri is a wonderful female sleuth and the San Francisco-Oakland area is always a pleasant place to visit. In her seventh Howard mystery, award winning author Janet Dawson has written her best novel in what is already a top quality series.

Harriet Klausner

3.0 out of 5 stars Not as good as some...., December 22, 2011

By 

karen s russo - See all my reviews

This review is from: Where the Bodies Are Buried (Jeri Howard Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

Generally speaking, I like this Janet Dawson series, mostly because I like the Bay Area setting. Reminds me of my many years living there; Dawson does a great job of making it real again, lots of scenes she describes are exactly like I remember them. That said, this book isn't among her best. It drags -- not as easy to sustain suspense or interest when the setting is a typically drab and gray corporate office, ie, "Cube City", which proves just as boring to a reader as it was to those who worked there. Time and again, I skipped hunks of pages in the middle, as the character analysis of this corporate executive or that corporate lawyer exceeded my ability to care. I'll still be on the lookout for more in this series, though -- just hope the others will have a little more action.