The girl next door

the long version

This book is the third in the Nero and Shamus series featuring investigative reporter Carter Ross. Reading his own paper's obituaries, Carter Ross comes across a woman named Nancy Marino who died in a hit and run car accident while she was actually on the job delivering copies of that very paper, the Eagle-Examiner. Struck by the opportunity to write a heroic piece about an everyday woman killed too young, he heads to her wake to gather tributes and anecdotes. But it is the last place Carter expects to find controversy, which he does when one of Nancy's sisters convinces him the accident might not have been an accident at all. Turns out the kind and generous Nancy may have made a few enemies after all, starting with her boss at a diner where she was a part-time waitress and even including the publisher of the Eagle-Examiner. Carter's investigation of this seemingly simple story soon has him in big trouble with his fulltime editor and sometime girlfriend, Tina Thompson, and the rest of the bosses at the paper, but he can't let it go, the story might be too good. But will his nose for trouble finally take him too far?