Twenty-eight-year-old Lena Scott is a graduate student at Columbia University, studying nonprofit management. Lena's mother died from cancer, and Lena hopes to run an organization that helps Black families affected by the illness.
Lena is something of an outlier in her family. Her father, Mel Pierce, is a multimillionaire hip-hop mogul.....
.....and her half-sister Desiree Pierce, who once starred on a reality television show, is a spoiled beauty addicted to spending money, getting drunk, and using drugs. Lena describes herself and her half-sister as looking alike, with their brown freckled faces and similar eyes.
Lena is distant from both her dad and her half-sister. Mel Pierce left Lena and her mom when Lena was a child, and hardly saw Lena while she was growing up. Thus Lena was largely raised by her mother, a strong Black woman who taught Lena to be the same.
When Mel skipped Lena's high school graduation, Lena was very hurt. As a result, Lena took her mother's last name and has hardly said a word to her father since. To be fair, Mel tries in his own way, since he gives Lena a Visa white card with no limit, and a Harlem townhouse worth $2,575,000.....though she wanted neither.
As for Desiree, Lena was close to her half-sister until two years ago, when Desiree's drinking and cocaine use led to her crashing her car. Lena was frantic with worry, but Desiree's only concern was fixing her make-up so she could take selfies for Instagram.
Disgusted with Desiree's substance abuse and shallow behavior, Lena blocked Desiree on her phone, though she continued to stalk her half-sister on social media.
As the story opens, Lena is devastated because - on the day after Desiree's twenty-fifth birthday party - Desiree is found dead from a drug overdose. Lena realizes she would have made up with her half-sister eventually, and now she'll never get the chance. The police say Desiree died from an accidental heroin overdose, because there are track marks on Desiree's body. However, Lena insists Desiree was deathly afraid of needles and never used heroin. Thus Lena is certain her half-sister was murdered, and she sets out to find the killer herself.
To find the murderer, Lena tracks down the people at Desiree's birthday celebration, which took place at Manhattan's ritzy Omni Hotel. The birthday guests included Desiree's sometimes boyfriend, a DJ called Neil Marks; Desiree's fellow reality TV star, Zarah Turner; Desiree's best friend Erin Ambrose; and more.
Lena also speaks with other people who knew Desiree, including Desiree's (and Lena's) father Mel; Desiree's mother Veronica; Aunt E - with whom Lena shares a house in the Bronx; Tam - Mel's personal assistant; Free - a hip-hop bigwig who was once Mel's business partner; and more.
Additional people interested in Lena's investigation include Police Detective Green, who provides a bit of help (even though he called Desiree's death an accidental overdose);
and journalist Stuart Jones, who wants to write a newspaper article and a book about Desiree.
As Lena conducts her inquiries, which includes doing a deep dive into all kinds of social media, there are plenty of twists and surprises.
Author Kellye Garrett's previous mysteries included humorous cozies in the 'Detective by Day' series, which are very fun and entertaining. This book is more of a thriller, and I was a little disappointed by the dearth of humor. My major quibble, though, is Lena obsessively looking at text messages, phone messages, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so on. This seems to take up a large part of the book, and it became a little wearisome (to me).
Still, I enjoyed the story and recommend it to mystery fans.
Rating: 3 stars
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