Silent Gavel by Merissa Racine
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Lauren Besoner is a court stenographer in the small town of Crawford, Wyoming, she owns her own home and has a dog she loves to bits, as well as some actual stability in her life, no thanks to her past dating and relationship endeavours both at home and in Denver the short time she lived there. She is happy with her life and job, that is until one day when she is heading to pick up the judge that she works for so that they can travel together to the courthouse a couple of towns over, instead, when the judge isn’t answering her calls or texts, Lauren goes up to the house to check to see if she is ready. When she approaches the house and sees the front door open, she calls out for the judge multiple times, getting louder as time goes on, eventually she goes inside when she notices that the judge’s dog is shivering and cold, however, when her foot touches some broken glass on the floor, Lauren is shocked to find the judge is lying on top of it.

Lauren panics and fumbles for the light switch and this is when she sees the broken glass panel in the front door and the judge lying in a pool of blood, stumbling back out of the door and taking the dog with her, she gets into her car and calls 911 to report what she has found. As the call progresses and Lauren has to go back inside the house to check for signs of life that it fully hits her what has happened and this is compounded when the police arrive and ask her to go to the station to make a statement while her clothes are taken away as evidence and the scene is sealed. As time passes and the events settle in, Lauren is brought in for questioning on multiple occasions, however, each time she goes, she feels like she is being treated like the number one suspect despite giving all the facts to the contrary, it doesn’t help that she finds out that her ex-husband was cheating on her with the judge while they were still marries, which is the opposite of what he told her originally.

As the investigation continues and nothing changes or moves forwards, Lauren’s unease with being the prime suspect increases and she gets the feeling that nothing is as it seems and that there is too much that doesn’t add up the more she thinks about it, so she starts to do a little digging of her own. Will Lauren be able to prove her innocence and work out who the real killer is, or will she go down for a crime she didn’t commit? This is a thrilling mystery filled with intrigue, secrets and more questions than answers until the end is reached and the killers identity is revealed.

Reviewed by @roxsannel

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