Payback

By Barbara A. Kiger

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0967258561
• ISBN13: 9780967258560
• Release Date: December 2004
• Publisher: CyPress Publications
• Length: 171 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.5" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Fast-paced novel

In Barbara A. Kiger's novel Payback, Ginny Arthur learns her client has been shot in the second paragraph, dead bodies turn up in the next two pages, and the pace doesn't relent until the final word. The novel introduces an engaging cast of characters, starting with a plucky heroine. A lawyer by training, Ginny operates Arthur & Arthur Security Agency, which she inherited from her uncle in the wake of a scandal. Uncle David, who raised Ginny after her parents' deaths, used the security company to set up a series of robberies and then disappeared before he could be arrested. As Ginny deals with her uncle's betrayal and unravels who shot her client, she receives a black eye and a concussion and is grazed by a bullet, but through all the mayhem, she keeps her sense of humor. The action begins when Dr. Leslie Parker's husband Bryan and his lover are shot dead in a motel room. Dr. Parker tells her lawyer Ginny that a man called her and told her to go to the motel room. She says that when she arrived, she saw blood-her husband's and his lover's. Then a scar-faced man pointed a gun at her, and she fled. EMTs found Leslie sitting in her car, bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound and sputtering her husband's name. Leslie is more than Ginny's client; she is also a friend, who is renting Uncle David's apartment. Ginny promises to help Leslie find out who killed her husband and to take care of personal business for her while she is hospitalized, such as arranging for Bryan's cremation, taking care of Leslie's cats, and recovering the couple's vehicles and confiscated personal property from police investigators. Dr. Steve Brock operates on Leslie to remove the bullet. Besides his medical expertise, Brock brings an element of romance to the novel as Ginny's lover. Their relationship is passionate but complicated by his anger when Ginny repeatedly exposes herself to danger and conceals from him just how perilous situations have been. Another complication is the obvious attraction that Detective MacPhearson feels for Ginny. Ginny growls and grumbles at Mac, yet the magnetism between them grows as they elude a monster snowplow and hunt down the murderer. Ginny learns that Leslie's husband Bryan had other secrets besides his affairs. After Uncle David's apartment is trashed, a scar-faced man is murdered there, and Ginny narrowly escapes being killed herself; she speculates that drugs are behind the double homicide. The dead man with the scar was Tim Williams, a known drug distributor connected to the Sandcastle, the hottest nightclub in Marion City. Ginny and MacPhearson pursue these drug traffickers, who have no intention of letting the law get in their way. Drug distribution becomes personal when Thelma, long-time secretary for Arthur & Arthur Security Agency, learns her grandson Kevin has been arrested for buying crack from Tim Williams before his death. As his lawyer and friend of the family, Ginny helps Kevin confront a moral dilemma and straighte

Wonderful heroine!

I loved getting to know Ginny Arthur and all the people in her world. Ginny is smart, gutsy, and a lot of fun to read about. The plot draws you in and keeps you turning the pages. I loved the surprise ending.

new author with interesting characters

very well written mystery with characters that you fill like are your new best friends. You fill all of their pain as the novel progesses. The ending has the required test that is unexpected.