The Jo Whitfield Mysteries

Jo Whitfield didn't set out to become a detective. She just has a bad habit of noticing things — an overheard phone call, a story that doesn't quite add up, a stranger's grief that turns out to matter more than anyone realized. Paired with her best friend and partner-in-nosiness, Bethany, and trailed — reluctantly, then not so reluctantly — by Detective Marcus Doyle, Jo keeps finding herself standing right where a murder investigation needs an outsider's eye.

The Jo Whitfield Mysteries are fast, twisty amateur-sleuth novels about the people who can't stop pulling at loose threads: friends who dig because someone has to, a detective who learns to trust instincts he can't always explain, and a killer who's always closer than anyone realizes. Each book stands on its own with a fully solved case, while Jo, Bethany, and the people around them keep growing, book to book, into a world readers want to move back into.

Start with Book One, A Stranger's Last Conversation, and keep going — the whole series builds toward one very messy, very ordinary life turning out to be anything but.