Part of Rose Gardner Mystery
First published 2012
Rose Gardner shows up to Fenton County jury duty expecting a quiet morning away from her job at the DMV. She gets something else entirely. After a rocky first meeting with assistant district attorney Mason Deveraux, she ends up seated on a murder trial. Then things get complicated. Rose had a vision in the men's restroom, and that vision tells her the man on trial did not commit the crime. She is sitting in the jury box with information no one else has, and the rules say she cannot act on it. Rose is not the kind of person who ignores the truth, so she starts looking for another way. Outside the courtroom, her sister Violet is pushing her to stop seeing Joe Simmons, an Arkansas state detective who Rose genuinely cares about. Violet wants Rose to date around. Rose is tired of being told what to do, but she is also not ready to fully commit to Joe. She is caught between the life she is building and the people who keep trying to shape it for her. The question is whether Rose will trust herself before it is too late for the man on trial.
Genres: mystery, adult-fiction, thriller, contemporary-romance
Vibes: character-driven, emotional, introspective, suspenseful
Tropes: amateur-sleuth, forced-proximity, love-triangle, second-chance-romance
Setting: Fenton County, Arkansas, DMV, Courtroom
348 pages · Paperback · CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Content warnings: murder