Marilyn's Mystery Reads

The protagonist of Killer Vibes is Peter Key, an almost-thirty-year-old bisexual, homeless, jobless man whose main occupation is selling/smoking weed.  He’s either a total waste of space or a fascinating character, depending on your point of view.

Here’s the novel’s opening sentence:  “Considering how badly I needed a place to stay, my uncle couldn’t have died at a better time.”  Peter is currently crashing at a friend’s brother’s house, living in the garage.  When the brother arrives home earlier than expected and sees his sister involved with Pete and another man in a threesome on his bed, he’s given less than nine hours to vacate the premises as well as having to turn over all the cash he’s earned by selling weed, his only source of income.  Otherwise,  Peter is told, “…they’ll find you in twenty pieces on I-35.”

Just an hour before his time in the garage is up, the doorbell rings.  Peter wants to ignore it, but the visitor goes to the garage door and sees Peter through a crack.  He introduces himself as Arthur Brennance, an attorney, and informs Peter that his Uncle Forrest had died several weeks earlier.  As Peter hadn’t seen his uncle in eleven years, it would be fair to say that he’s not devastated by this news, but he is totally surprised to discover that he’s the sole beneficiary of Forrest’s estate, his house in the Hyde Park section of Austin, Texas.

Brennance explains that a conservative estimate of the home’s worth is one-point-one million dollars.  The house is in very bad shape, he goes on to tell Peter, but the land is what makes the estate so valuable.  He has a Realtor ready to buy the house as is, but Peter wants to go to Austin to see the place for himself.  After all, he thinks, it’s got to be better than the garage.

However, the attorney continues, the estate comes with a five hundred thousand dollar line of credit that his uncle took out a week before he died.  When Peter asks if he can simply return the loan to the bank, Brennance tells him it’s more complicated than that, that Forrest immediately converted the loan into cash and no one knows where the cash is.

When Peter enters the house, he discovers it’s a hoarder’s paradise.  Clothing, playing cards, lamps, tables, toys, and bedding fill every room, but he’s so exhausted he goes to the bedroom and falls asleep instantly.  The next morning he meets his neighbor, Eric, a Realtor, and coincidentally (perhaps?) when the two men walk to a nearby coffee shop, the young woman behind the counter hands Peter a business card with the name and number of a property management company.  It appears to Peter that his new inheritance is of interest to a number of people.

Then something even stranger happens.  The following night a man appears on the house’s porch, and his opening comment to Peter is “You need to sell this house….You still have a chance to get out of this alive.”

Killer Vibes’ cover announces it as “The First Peter Key Mystery,” and that is definitely good news.  The book is a wonderful read, filled with fascinating characters both good and evil, a one-of-a-kind protagonist, and a plot with an excellent twist at the end.  To quote from Google Books, “JACK FRIDAY is the pen name of the author of several queer supernatural thrillers. He lives in Texas, where he does as little as possible.”

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.