Caught Dead Handed (A Witch City Mystery, #1)

by Carol J. Perry

She's not a psychic--she just plays one on TV.

Most folks associate the city of Salem, Massachusetts with witches, but for Lee Barrett, it's home. This October she's returned to her hometown--where her beloved Aunt Ibby still lives--to interview for a job as a reporter at WICH-TV. But the only opening is for a call-in psychic to host the late night horror movies. It seems the previous host, Ariel Constellation, never saw her own murder coming.

Lee reluctantly takes the job, but when she starts seeing real events in the obsidian ball she's using as a prop, she wonders if she might really have psychic abilities. To make things even spookier, it's starting to look like Ariel may have been an actual practicing witch--especially when O'Ryan, the cat Lee and Aunt Ibby inherited from her, exhibits some strange powers of his own. With Halloween fast approaching, Lee must focus on unmasking a killer--or her career as a psychic may be very short lived. . .

• ISBN10: 1617733695
• ISBN13: 9781617733697
• Publish Date: 2 September 2014 (first published 1 January 2014)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 23 January 2024
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Kensington Publishing
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 416
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/isbn/9781617733697

Reviews

[Mystereity Reviews]

Caught Dead Handed It was a bit hard to rate this one.  On one hand, it was a really unique plot.  On the other hand, it was a really weird plot.  I enjoyed it, but overall, my reaction is that this is not your usual cozy read, and seriously, wtf?
 
Lee Barrett returns to her hometown of Salem, MA to take a job as a reporter at the local tv station, WICH-TV (Witch tv? Salem? Get it? Ha!)  only to find out the job was given to someone else.  As she leaves the station, she finds the body of Ariel Constellation, the host of WICH-TV's witch-themed late night show, which turns out to be a stroke of luck, because guess who is offered Ariel's job?
 
Not long after, another body turns up and Lee starts seeing visions of the murders in Ariel's black crystal ball.  Can she figure out the visions and catch a killer?
 
I have to say, I had most of it figured out a third of the way through the book and all of it figured out halfway through the book. There's a fine line between giving hints and giving spoilers, and this book toed the line a few times.   Although it didn't hamper my enjoyment, after awhile, I just wanted the book to hurry it up. There were also a lot of clues that the MC didn't followup on which would've solved the mystery a whole lot sooner.
 
And yet, despite all the hemming and hawing around, the ending was a bit too rushed.  I think a few chapters could've been cut out of the middle (the Florida trip was pretty useless) and a little more care with the ending and this would've been a 5 star book easily.
 
Still, for the first in a series, it was really good, and having read the third book in the series recently, I know the writing gets better. 
 
But whew, that's a plot I've never seen in a book before.