About the Author

Lauren Carr is the international best-selling author of the Mac Faraday, Lovers in Crime, and Thorny Rose Mysteries. The twelfth installment in the Mac Faraday Mystery series, Candidate for Murder will be released June 2016.

Lauren is a popular speaker who has made appearances at schools, youth groups, and on author panels at conventions. She lives with her husband, son, and four dogs (including the real Gnarly) on a mountain in Harpers Ferry, WV.

About the Book

It’s election time in Spencer, Maryland, and the race for mayor is not a pretty one. In recent years, the small resort town has become divided between the local year-round residents who have enjoyed their rural way of life and the city dwellers moving into their mansions, taking over the town council, and proceeding to turn Deep Creek Lake into a closed gate community—complete with a host of regulations for everything from speed limits to clothes lines.

When the political parties force-feed two unsavory mayoral nominees on the town residents, Police Chief David O’Callaghan decides to make a statement—by nominating Gnarly, Mac Faraday’s German shepherd, to run as mayor of Spencer!

What starts out as a joke turns into a disaster when overnight Gnarly becomes the front runner—at which point his political enemies take a page straight out of Politics 101. What do you do when you’re behind in a race? Dig up dirt on the front runner, of course.

Seemingly, someone is not content to rest with simply embarrassing the front runner by publicizing his dishonorable discharge from the United States Army, but to throw in a murder for good measure. With murder on the ballot, Mac Faraday and the gang—including old friends from past cases—dive in to clear Gnarly’s name, catch a killer, and save Spencer!

Book Review

Lauren Carr has put together another addictive page turner.  Featuring many of the characters in “Cancelled Vows”. It is yet another mystery that emerges from an unlikely place, rather than a good old fashioned case, which makes it all the more interesting to read.

The plot this time is entwined with the political life of the town of Spencer.  This provides Carr with the opportunity to delve into various topics related to politics, namely the corruption that is so intimately related with it as well as the frustrations of a populace who doesn’t feel taken care od by those whose job it is to do just that.  Another related topic she touches on is that of gentrification and it’s relationship with corrupt politics.

It is a sign of Carr’s writing and wit that yet again, the weight of the book doesnt become a drag.  Oftentimes it can feel like an author pads his or her book with awkwardly placed and phrased statements that are meant to make a point about a certain aspect of our society that turns out to be an interruption to the flow.  But Carr’s book is packed with thought provoking conversations that are such a natural part od the story that one only notoces them by the number of times one starts reflecting on the points raised and insights shared by the characters.

I have come to accept that Carr’s work will cost me more than a night’s sleep; she now owes me a good, strong mocha (or rather, three) instead.  Unless she finds oit that the sleepless nights were well worth it.

Thank you to iReads Book Tours for providing
a copy of this book for me to review!