Death and White Diamonds by Jeff Markowitz

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Richie Cunningham is just a quality assurance specialist who works in an office day in and day out. So, there’s no way he’s a murderer. When he goes on a romantic weekend trip with his girlfriend, Lorraine, he discovers her body on the beach. He knows he didn’t kill her, but until he figures out how to prove his innocence, he has to do something with the body.

While following Richie as he laments over Lorraine’s passing, and tries to unravel what actually happened, the reader is introduced to a whole host of curious characters. Lizzy Rizzo captured this reviewer’s imagination, clad in her “faded housecoat and rollers”, when she heard the news of her husband Izzy’s death.

I enjoyed the interactions between Detective Johnson and Detective McGowan, who, until he suffers a head injury, is a completely unpleasant person. Detective Johnson finds himself mired in his last case before his retirement, while he tries to hide his aches, pains, and his age. The story itself is a whirlwind, and it’s impossible to resist becoming completely involved in the lives of the characters.

In Death and White Diamonds, nothing is as it seems. And although it appears as if Richie’s life couldn’t possibly get any worse, he loses Lorraine’s body while trying to find a way to unravel the mystery of her death.

None of this made sense. Someone had murdered my girlfriend. And if that weren’t enough, someone had stolen her remains. And I was caught in the middle.

Despite numerous attempts to put the book down, I couldn’t stop reading Death and White Diamonds. It is fast-paced, intriguing, thrilling, and horrifying all at once. And you will never guess the ending. Jeff Markowitz has done it again. Death and White Diamonds is so good it should come with a warning label, because there’s no way you’ll be able to sleep until you reach the last page.

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