Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Book Author: Michelle Chouinard

Owner and guide of SF Killer Crime Tours, Capri Sanzio knows the history of the city’s criminal past better than most.  From San Francisco’s Tenderloin District to its Barbary Coast, there have been murders, robberies, abductions, and more since the first settlement in 1776.  Capri is aware that the people on her tours enjoy the frisson of danger they get from hearing the details of such crimes, but when the danger hits closer to home, it’s a different story.

Lorraine, one of the women on the Barbary Coast tour, has made herself a bit of a nuisance, asking Capri numerous questions, but the tour guide is patient.  Suddenly Lorraine screams and points to a building on a side street.  “Someone’s attacking that woman.”

Capri calls the police on her cell phone, but when they arrive and enter the building they don’t find anyone in the apartment Lorraine has pointed to.  After giving Lorraine a stern warning about wasting police time, the officers leave, but Capri now has several questions she’s turning over in her mind.  Could Lorraine have seen a rehearsal for a play and misinterpreted it?  Was she on medication that had her imagining things?  Could she have created the entire incident to put herself in the spotlight?

Still bothered by the discrepancy between Lorraine’s story and the fact that the police found an empty apartment at the site of the alleged violence, Capri contacts Inspector Dan Petito, a friend and romantic interest, who promises he will look into the situation and let her know what he discovers the following day.  However, when Capri calls Lorraine to update her, the latter is bothered by the time lag.  She tells Capri, “God only knows what could happen to her by then.”

Upset by Lorraine’s response to her phone call, Capri decides to do some investigating on her own.  She starts with the landlady of the building where the alleged crime took place, and although the woman won’t let Capri into the apartment, she does tell Capri that the tenant, Leeya Styles, had a boyfriend.  Then Leeya’s body is found in a dumpster outside her art studio.

In addition to dealing with Leeya’s death, Capri is also facing a major problem revolving around her ex-husband and his finances.  While part of her would like Todd to figure out the solution to his problems on his own, his financial instability directly impacts on their daughter Morgan.  That makes it something Capri is forced to handle.

A Tour to Die For is the second in the Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco Mystery series.  As she did in the first novel, Michelle Chouinard gives readers an attractive, believable heroine with a fascinating backstory.  Capri, her ex-husband Todd, their daughter Morgan, and all the other characters are realistic and credible and make this book well worth reading.

You can read more about the author at this website.

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.

What a great title.  What a great mystery.  I imagine that many of us, myself included, have gone on mystery or ghost tours.  A quick Google search brought up mystery tours in England, Ireland, France, and of course in various locations in the United States, including two near me–in Boston and Salem, Massachusetts.

Now Michelle Chouinard has set a mystery in a small company that hosts such tours in San Francisco.  Since the city has been host to a number of killers over the years, the company’s owner, Capri Sanzio, has plenty of material to choose from.  Now, however, murder strikes closer to home.

Capri’s grandfather, William Sanzio, was convicted of murdering three women.  Because of the manner of their deaths–first being hit over the head with a blunt object, then knifed to death, finally having their throats slit open–William Sanzio was given the nickname Overkill Bill.  Capri’s father has always refused to discuss his father, and nothing Capri has ever said has changed his mind.

Now two horrific events have brought the decades-old case into the news again.  First, a wealthy San Francisco matron, Katherine Harper, is found dead outside the Legion of Honor, the site of two murders in the twentieth century, and the method of this murder is identical to those committed by Overkill Bill.  And the following day Capri receives a phone call from her former father-in-law Philip; his wife Sylvia, mother of Capri’s ex-husband, is missing.

Capri and Philip search The Chateau, as Sylvia and Philip’s mansion is called, but they cannot find anything to explain Sylvia’s disappearance.  She had returned home from a trip the evening before, irritated about something that she refused to share with her husband, and her car, house keys, and cell phone are in the house.

The police are called, and homicide Inspector Dan Petito shows Philip and Capri a photo of a woman whose body was found earlier in the day outside the Presidio, formerly a military base and now a national park.  It’s Sylvia, killed in the same manner as Katherine Harper and the three victims of Overkill Bill.

It’s obvious that there is a copycat killer on the loose since the crimes attributed to Capri’s grandfather were committed decades earlier and he died in prison.  After all this time, who would have chosen to murder in this way. and why these two women?

Capri is determined to help the police with their investigation, although they definitely do not want her assistance.  In fact, Capri and her daughter Morgan are suspects in the latest murders, as both had argued with Sylvia the night before her death over her decision to stop paying Morgan’s graduate school tuition.  That gives Capri a strong reason to look into the recent deaths, hopefully solve the murders, and at the same time find evidence that would exonerate her late grandfather as a murderer.

The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco is a clever, original mystery with an appealing heroine who is determined to get to the bottom of the two current cases.  Michelle Chouinard has written a novel well worth reading.

You can read more about the author at this website.

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.