Murder for Mayor

A woman hiking the shoreline of Lake Superior fears she's having a heart attack and gives an exquisite necklace to a good Samaritan who comes to her aid. "Don't tell a soul," she warns, "except Molly Berg." When the woman is brutally murdered, the young female hiker becomes a target for death and must run for her life.

Why would someone kill a loving grandmother on a beautiful summer day? How does that crime connect to the New Year's Day disappearance of the woman who designed the necklace? What about the designer's husband who vanished the same day? And how does it all link to a 1984 murder in Minnesota's Scott County?

When Laura Kjelstad begins connecting the dots of the crimes, she becomes the next target. The necklace leads her to Sedona, Arizona, where she uncovers dark secrets and corruption on a global level. Only a handful of people know that she's gone to Arizona, but a friend who accompanied her is kidnapped in Prescott and is terrorized on a harrowing trip down the mountain to Camp Verde. Someone knows the answers and has turned his sights on Laura.

A young widow, Laura is the first woman mayor of a small town in northern Minnesota. In the midst of a blistering reelection campaign, her opponents deal in hostility, misinformation, and outright lies. Her rival calls out the Internet trolls to defeat her, but Laura leaned from her Norwegian grandparents how to deal with trolls.

Peterson deftly handles both pacing and plotting and ties the subplots together superbly. The reader is rewarded with a genuine understanding of the strongly drawn characters and gains insights into the real life of small town politics in all its decency and ugliness. The book is balanced with a bit of romance and gentle humor that enriches the novel.