Review: Last Words by Rich Zahradnik

Last Words

by Rich Zahradnik

Publisher: Camel Press

Pages: 248

Format: book

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  In March of 1975, as New York City hurtles toward bankruptcy and the Bronx burns, newsman Coleridge Taylor roams police precincts and ERs. He is looking for the story that will deliver him from obits, his place of exile at the Messenger-Telegram. Ever since he was demoted from the police beat for inventing sources, the 34-year-old has been a lost soul.

A break comes at Bellevue, where Taylor views the body of a homeless teen picked up in the Meatpacking District. Taylor smells a rat: the dead boy looks too clean, and he's wearing a distinctive Army field jacket. A little digging reveals that the jacket belonged to a hobo named Mark Voichek and that the teen was a spoiled society kid up to no good, the son of a city official.

Taylor's efforts to protect Voichek put him on the hit list of three goons who are willing to kill any number of street people to cover tracks that just might lead to City Hall. Taylor has only one ally in the newsroom, young and lovely reporter Laura Wheeler. Time is not on his side. If he doesn't wrap this story up soon, he'll be back on the obits page--as a headline, not a byline. Last Words is the first book in the Coleridge Taylor mystery series.


Kritters Thoughts:  A who dun it told from a reporter who has fallen from grace and is trying to earn his way out of the obits.  He goes looking for a story and finds one - a dead boy in the morgue who is in clothes that aren't his, but is made to look homeless.  Taylor knows instantly that this boy isn't homeless and there is a story around his death and he is determined to get the story.

I have read a few books now where the reporter becomes the investigator and so far I am a fan.  The inquisitive nature of a reporter works as a different way to get an investigation done without using a detective.  I loved the added fact of Taylor trying to win his way back onto the newspaper - it gave him drive!  

As most who dun its, this one had a twist that involved the killer and at the last minute the tables turned - I loved it.  I always love it when the killer lurks under your nose but is there through the whole book, my favorite who dun it!


Rating: definitely a good read, but can't read two in a row

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from Meryl Moss Media.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.