-- Scream 3

Too bad Leigh Ann Warren isn’t a horror movie fan, or she would have seen her latest adventure coming a mile away. She was pleasantly packing up her belongings, preparing to move out of her apartment, when she gets a most unsettling phone call. Some madman demands that Leigh Ann produce a medal her father received in the military, a Silver Star. The man claims it rightfully belongs to him, and tells her that if she doesn’t come up with it in one week, her foster mother, Nunna, and her husband, Walter, are goners.

Sounds like a relatively simple task, except that Leigh Ann’s biological parents died in a fire when she was 5 years old. After living with two sets of cousins, she ends up living with Nunna, and barely recalls minimal facts about her early childhood. Assuming it didn’t burn up in the fire, how the heck is she going to find the Silver Star?

The only logical answer is to retrace her roots, and that means hitting the road to find her long lost family - family that is less than thrilled to see her. But Leigh Ann would make a pact with the devil to save her loved ones, even if it means uncovering a whole lot of skeletons to do it.

The third entry in West’s underrated series, finds Leigh Ann trying to move on with her life. After being uprooted from her job, this former Washington D.C. policewoman is preparing for her wedding to her former partner, Dillon Kennedy AKA Duck. She accepted long ago that she had no family outside of Nunna, but still carries some emotional baggage that she thought she had buried. The kidnapper’s phone call triggers some long repressed memories, making Leigh Ann’s search for Nunna and Walter not the only mystery. The family secrets that she uncovers are equally as compelling, especially when it appears that someone is out to silence her.

What makes this series such a gem is that the author has created human characters. All of them display a range of emotion, most notably Leigh Ann. She’s a smart, tough, former cop, but underneath these noble attributes are vulnerability, fear and uncertainty. The girl’s got moxie, in spades, and reading any story about her, let alone a mystery can be one engrossing experience.

The first two books in this series were nominated for Edgar Awards, and Killer Riches is just as strong and readable, placing it in serious contention for a third one. With human characters, nice plot twists, and engaging dialogue, West is definitely the best storyteller that not nearly enough people are reading.

--Wendy Crutcher