The Bequest by Nancy Boyarsky (Nicole Graves Mystery #2)
The Bequest is the second book in Nancy Boyarsky’s Nicole Graves mystery series. I haven’t read the first book, but I had no major problems following the plot or understanding the characters.
Nicole Graves, a prestigious lawyer, has just come back from the UK, where she was supposed to meet her boyfriend, Ronald Reinhardt, who was a no-show.
Her mood was quite sour already, so when she arrived at her office, at Bascomb, Rice, Smith and Di Angelo, and learned that Robert Blair, one of the investigators working with them, has disappeared for the last few days as well, Nicole decided to investigate. It can’t be that two people she cares about just disappeared on her!
So she went to Robert’s expensive and exquisite house where she found him dead, killed by a bullet to his head. The more Nicole thought about the whole thing, the more questions she had.
How could Robert afford such a place? Where did he have the money from, because his salary would definitely not be enough for this mansion. And above all, who killed Robert?
The situation is further complicated when she realizes that the detective in charge of Robert’s case is also after her, seemingly suspecting her of something. But of what? And what about the life insurance policy that apparently Robert left behind?
Without realizing, Nicole’s life has become too weird for her own good. Her name has been dragged into the mud, and soon enough everyone seems to be after Nicole, including a ton of paparazzi. She has to clear her name and find the real killer before it’s too late.
The story starts slow at the beginning, but around the second half the action really starts to pick up. Since I haven’t read the first book, I had no idea what the deal with Reinhard is. Is he a good guy or a bad guy? Also it seems that he was not such a big deal afterall, since Nicole had no qualms finding a new love and sleeping with him soon after. I don’t much like love triangles in books, but thankfully this one was resolved with grace.
The characters were rather well-fleshed out and Nicole seemed nice enough. I was a bit on the edge at Nicole and her new boyfriend’s first fight, I don’t like the signs of his behavior – without going into spoilers, usually such early behavior is pointing to an abusive partner. But, I guess we’ll see it in the next book.
I would consider The Bequest more of a romantic suspense novel rather than a thriller, and as such, it was a pleasant beach read.
