New Jersey Noir: Cape May (Jack Colt Murder Mystery 2) by William Baer-review & excerpt

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ABOUT THE BOOK: ReleAse Date January 15, 2021

After solving the assassination case of his beloved uncle, Colt finds himself truly alone, ditched by his girlfriend. However, there’s not much respite or time for introspection for him: he’s called on again to solve a new murder case, along with a suspiciously related cold case. What follows is another gripping tale in the backdrop of the Garden State’s sights and scenes, including its picturesque beaches, casinos, and the rural Pine Barrens. In New Jersey Noir: Cape May—Book Two of his Jack Colt Murder Mystery Novels series—William Baer continues to enchant and spellbind.

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REVIEW:NEW JERSEY NOIR: CAPE MAY is the second instalment in William Baer’s contemporary, adult JACK COLT MURDER MYSTERY series focusing on thirty-two year old, New Jersey private investigator and descendant of the inventor of the Colt revolver Jack Colt.

Told from several first person perspectives including Jack Colt, NEW JERSEY NOIR: CAPE MAY fast forwards the series but a few weeks wherein we find our hero Jack Colt approached by Cape May, New Jersey Judge Richard O’Brien, a fifty-something single father, regarding a cold case involving the murder of his seventeen year old, daughter Nikki, one half of twin sisters Nikki and Rikki, ten years earlier. Days earlier, the judge hired private investigator, Edward Colt (no relation), but the man was murdered the night before, leaving instructions and money (along with a list of suspects) to contact our story line hero. With the help of his late uncle’s receptionist, Mrs. Doris Solerno aka Nonna, aka best friend and Detective Luca Solerno’s grandmother, Jack Colt begins an investigation into both murders (present and past), only to discover that long buried secrets are not as buried or secret as once thought, and everyone is suspect until proven wrong.

William Baer pulls the reader into a captivating, thought provoking, and multi-layered story of jealousy and rivalry, resentment and hatred; adultery, friendship and love. Jack Colt traverses a world of murder and obsession, betrayal and vengeance in an effort to find a killer who has now targeted our story line hero, and the woman who has opted to go along for the ride.

Click HERE for Sandy’s review on book one NEW JERSEY NOIR

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy

My daughter was murdered ten years ago. She was seventeen at the time.”
“Tell me about it.”
“She was out with some friends, vanished for a day, then someone saw her car driving across the beach into the ocean near the Cove Beach jetty. They found her dead in the trunk of the car.”
I remembered it. Some of it. It got a lot of press.
Naturally, the water and the trunk made me think of The Killing. That “Who Killed Rosie Larson?” television series that I’d watched when it first aired on AMC.
I wondered if one inspired the other.
“She had a twin, right?”
“Yes, but her sister wasn’t there that night.”
I was intrigued.
Definitely.

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William Baer, a recent Guggenheim fellow, is the award-winning author of twenty-two books, and his various plays have been produced at over thirty American theaters.  He grew up in the Bronx and Wayne, New Jersey, where his family was actively involved in “little theater.”  A graduate of Rutgers (B.A.) and New York University (M.A.), he completed his dissertation in creative writing at the University of South Carolina under the direction of James Dickey.  After attending the Johns Hopkins’ Writing Seminars (M.A.), he served as a Fulbright at the University of Coimbra in Portugal.  He then attended the University of Southern California’s Graduate School of Cinema (M.A.), where he received the Jack Nicholson Screenwriting Award.  The recipient of a Creative Writing Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, he currently lives in North Jersey.