Secrets You Can't Keep by Debra Webb

A cabin in the woods. Three dead, one in critical condition. Property owned by not just any Tennessee local, but one of the richest men in the country.

Vera Boyett isn’t quite sure what it means. But that’s why Sheriff Gray “Bent” Benton called her: to figure it out. Criminal analysis is what she does best. Even when the town is in panicked shambles, even when the case is more delicate than most…and even when it’s not the only case on her plate.

Vera’s family is caught in a deadly mess of its own. And while her pregnant sister seems an unlikely culprit, each new detail seems to point to her guilt. Desperate to protect her, Vera vows to find out what really happened.

As evidence emerges in both cases, Vera and Bent work to unravel a dangerous web of secrets to get to the truth. But their investigations reveal more than they ever expected…

Vera and her two sisters Eve and Luna have lived in this small Tennesse town their whole life. As children, it seemed they lived with an evil stepmother until a tonne of bodies were found in their back garden - details are vague. As adults, Eve is an undertaker, Luna is a librarian (and pregnant), and Vera is a retired cop, now working as a police consultant for the local sheriff Bent (honest), who is also her boyfriend. A rich millionaire and some as yet unidentified strangers are found naked with multiple stab wounds and Vera is called in to assist the Sheriff with his investigation.

Just like this book, I’m going to keep the review pretty straightforward. Secrets You Can’t Keep is like a Channel 5 police procedural complete with mild romantic undertones. The crime scenes are delicately handled, the sexual relationship between Vera and Bent is essentially told through cheeky comments and a lot of the use of ‘staying over,’ and swearing is used sparingly, if at all. I found the plot drove itself forward well enough, skipping between Vera investigating a triple homicide and the suspicious death of her pregnant sister’s mother-in-law. Some of the plot twists are identifiable a mile away, while others are pretty much put in front of the reader without fanfare. While for the most part it works to keep things simple, it was a bit jarring to see three of the potential culprits talking through their part in the crime in a chapter only halfway through the book. Felt like the reader would have got there eventually and it was a bit of an unnecessary add.

My favourite part of the novel was a conversation between the medical examiner and Vera at a crime scene, that included a full-chested use of misinformation that fentanyl is the most dangerous substance known to man:

‘By the way’ - Collins looked Vera up and down -’you were careful what you touched, right? Even him?’
Vera nodded. ‘I only did the chest compressions’ Worry trickled through her. ‘I did check his carotid pulse and pupils, but that’s it.’
’Good. Because if this is fentanyl poisoning as I suspect,’ Collins went on, ‘you could have ended up in a body bag too.’

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Secrets You Can’t Keep is maybe the 176th book by Debra Webb , a USA Today best selling novelist who has sold over ten million books worldwide. Poor Debra probably has no idea what book number this is either as she seems to write about three books a year. I can say with confidence though that Secrets You Can’t Keep is the third book in the Vera Boyett series, though I’ve not read anything by her before and got on just fine (other than not really understanding a few references to them having loads of bodies in their garden as kids), so don’t panic.

Overall it’s a page turner. It feels like the sort of book you’d find in one of those book swap cabinets little English villages sometimes have, the sort of thing you’d pick when you forgot to bring a book with you anyway so just take because its that or a 1996 Microsoft Excel Guide or a book on the Planetology of Baby Names. You sit in some musty old B&B armchair and find Secrets You Can’t Keep is just passable enough to fill some downtime while it decides to piss it down outside. The plot drives along, you find out who did what and why, and there’s some minor peril on the way, even the odd ‘heck’ and ‘damn.’ After 175 books Debra clearly has a handle on how to get a story done although its basically only as good as the time it fills.

This was a free review copy of Secrets You Can’t Keep. Thanks to Thomas & Mercer via NetGalley for providing the opportunity to read this ahead of publication on December 9th.