Unholy City by Carrie Smith / Review by Sheila Sobel
Unholy City
By Carrie Smith
Crooked Lane Books
$27.99
ISBN 978-1683313298
Published November 7, 2017
Book of the Day
Secrets, lies, and motives abound in the third book in Carrie Smith’s Claire Codella Mystery series, Unholy City. Three bodies and a plethora of suspects bring Detective Claire Codella, Detective Brian Haggerty, and Detective Eduardo Muñoz back together again. The rector, the vestry members, the organist and the homeless men living in the church basement shelter find their lives under the microscopic lens of Detective Claire Codella in this fast-paced mystery set in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Still struggling with post-cancer perceptions of the fragile female and anxious to get back on top of her career, Claire inadvertently snatches the investigative lead on the murder of senior churchwarden Philip Graves from Detective Brian Haggerty, creating tension in both their professional and romantic relationships. As the story unfolds and the body count rises, the lives of the prime suspects unravel and long-standing church associations splinter.
Once again, Carrie Smith deftly weaves common issues which face women in the workplace together with an exciting who-dun-it.
For fans of Silent City and Forgotten City, books one and two in A Claire CodellaMystery series, Unholy City is a must-read. If one is new to the series, Unholy Cityquickly educates the reader to recurring characters. A good standalone, a terrific series.
Sheila Sobel’s debut novel Color Blind was the winner of the 2017 Killer Nashville Reader's Choice Award for Best Tween/YA Fiction and Finalist for the 2017 Silver Falchion Award for Best YA Fiction. She was also nominated for the 2016 Allegra Johnson Prize in Novel Writing through the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.
As a Senior Auditor for Warner Bros., Sheila oversaw production costs for films including “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” the “Matrix” trilogy, “The Dark Knight” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” After working on 70+ Independent and Studio movies, Sheila stepped away from the film business to complete her first YA novel.
Sheila is a member of International Thriller Writers (ITW), Sisters in Crime (SinC), Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), Children’s Book Writers-LA (CBW-LA) and Women in Film (WIF). She lives in Southern California with her husband, two rescue dogs and one rescue cat.