The Hometown Hero's Last Shot: An Indiana Small-Town Murder Mystery

West knows what a small-town procedural needs and delivers it methodically. The opening chapter earns its keep — Cat Crearo's stolen day off, the two Golden Retrievers who out-run her, the phone call from Richards she lets ring twice out of principle — gives us a detective with texture before a single body appears. Then the hook lands clean: a hometown basketball hero dead at center court under his own championship banners, with a live wire taped to the rim behind him. That's a killer image, and West doesn't waste it — she builds the scene procedurally, fingerprint by fingerprint, in a way that respects readers who want the mechanics of an investigation, not just the drama.

The strongest sustained achievement is the handling of Sheriff Delaney. He's twenty-two, ex-military police, running his department out of a converted band room with no air conditioning, and West lets him be genuinely competent — the scene diagram with fixed-point measurements, the instinct not to disturb the wire — while still fumbling in believable ways, like mentioning he uses the crime-scene office 'most afternoons' only after Cat's already dusted it for prints. Their dynamic ('You did everything wrong.' / 'That looked like something.') is the book's real engine, and it's earned through procedure rather than banter for its own sake.

The burn on Johnny's palm, the tripped breaker, the missing phone, the teenage protégé's clothes still on the bench — West is stacking specific, checkable clues rather than vague dread, and that discipline is the mark of someone who's studied how this genre actually works.