As the song says, you can’t always get what you want. Maybe that’s why, instead of fulfilling her youthful dream of being a rock star, Layla Fortune is living in a trailer park while playing third-rate gigs, including a stint at a ΚΌ70s Abba brunch. Given everything else she’s been through lately, she’s not complaining (much) about satin ruffles and go-go boots. She has a squad of supportive new BFFs, and she’s reclaimed a relationship with her famous rocker dad. His recent diagnosis has brought them even closer—sharing the trailer park’s lake house, which he’s had remodeled in typically over-the-top style.
Layla’s dad loves his new community and the feeling seems mutual. So, why is one of them blackmailing him? It’s a mystery almost as baffling as the assignment Layla receives from her former look into the brutal murder of a mild-mannered school teacher. Archie Wilkins was bludgeoned with a candelabra, shot up with drugs, and stuffed into a church confessional. Not the kind of outcome expected for a guy reputed to be the world’s nicest.
Perhaps Archie had secrets. Perhaps everyone does, including Layla’s one-time cop colleagues. She’s been blaming herself for a deadly ambush that destroyed her career and her peace of mind, but as her new friends help Layla regain her memories, a different picture emerges, and it’s one that forces her to question so much that she’s taken as truth . . . (Summary via Goodreads)
Even though Gimme Shelter is only the second book in the Layla Virtue Mystery series by Libby Klein, I am already a HUGE fan !!
In Gimme Shelter Layla is learning to live her new life, one where she is no longer on the police force, is the new owner of the trailer park she lives in thanks to her rich and famous rockstar dad, going to AA meetings with three women who she now calls friends and trying to take care of her dad who has early dementia.
Thanksgiving is around the corner and Layla and her dad are moving into their new home, the owner's cottage on the property of the trailer park after he had it renovated. But before she can really grasp what she is seeing, she is approached by an old co-worker on the force to help look into a murder that they haven't had any luck with solving.
Layla is not sure who she can trust on the force and still has a lot of questions regarding an op that she was in charge of went wrong killing her entire team. So, while she works through that with her friend and neighbor Nick as well as her AA posse, they will all work together to try to solve Archie Wilkins murder. But trying to find someone who wanted a second-grade teacher and all-around good guy dead will be hard, especially seeing as the police have come up empty.
I fell in love with this series with the first book, Vice and Virtue, because there are so many things going on to keep your interest as well as fall in love with. The only bad thing is having to wait, patiently, for the next one because Klein knows how to end the book keeping readers on the hook.
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