Hello, Transcriber

Every night, while the street lamps shed the only light on Wisconsin’s most crime-ridden city, police transcriber Hazel Greenlee listens as detectives divulge Black Harbor’s gruesome secrets. An aspiring novelist, Hazel believes that writing a book could be her only ticket out of this frozen hellscape, but her life isn’t exactly brimming with inspiration. Until her neighbor confesses to hiding the corpse of an overdose victim. 

With an insider’s look at the investigation, Hazel becomes spellbound by the lead detective, Nikolai Kole, and the chilling narrative he shares with her. Through his transcription, she learns that the suspicious death is linked to Candy Man―a drug dealer notorious for selling illegal substances to children―and when Kole invites her on a covert operation to help take the dealer down, the promise of a story calls to her. As the investigation unfolds, Hazel will discover just how far she will go for her story, even if it means destroying her marriage, her career, and any chance she has of getting out of Black Harbor alive. Because if she’s learned one relentless truth about this place, it’s the fact that everybody lies.

This book did not deliver for me like I had hoped. The character development was flat and I didn’t buy into any of the relationships. I had high hopes for a story told from a police transcriber, but we actually got very little from that perspective. It was too vulgar and too predictable and almost read like a gritty romance with a mystery thrown in from my perspective. I wish I would have liked it more but just wasn’t a story for me. 

               * I received this book from the author/publisher in exchange for an honest review *