Who Killed These Girls?

Who Killed These Girls?  Cold Case: The Yogurt Shop Murders by Beverly Lowry, 373 pages

On December 6, 1991, firefighters in Austin, Texas responded to reports of a small fire at an "I Can't Believe Its Yogurt!" shop in a suburban strip mall.  Inside they discovered the raped, murdered, partially burned corpses of four teenage girls.  Two young men were subsequently convicted of participating in the crime, but after ten years in prison they were released and all charges against them dropped.  The real perpetrators have never been caught.  

Beverly Lowry is intimately familiar with Austin.  She knows its neighborhoods, knows its people, and she knows how deeply this horrific crime wounded the community.  Most of all, having herself lost a child to an unknown hit-and-run driver, she knows something of the pain of the families of the victims.  This perspective turns Who Killed These Girls? into something more than an ordinary true crime book - a fact-based meditation on the inexplicable nature of evil and the elusive nature of truth.

Witches Protection Program

Witches Protection Program by Michael Phillip Cash          238 pages

I’ve read two other novels by Michael Phillip Cash (The After House  and Stillwell: A Haunting on Long Island) and loved them both. With Witches Protection Program Cash moves from the paranormal/thriller genre to the suspense/comedy genre.
 

Wes Rockville is a police officer in Manhattan. Not sure if he is federal or local, but itreally doesn’t matter. He has blown his first case and is now being re-assigned to a top-secret governmental agency, The Witches Protection Program. This organization has been in existence for 232 years. Its job: to protect the good witches who live among us.
 

At first, Wed was reluctant to believe in witches, good or bad. He reports to Alastair Verne, a man who knows a thing or two about protecting the good. His first assignment is to help Alastair uncover a plan by a wealthy cosmetic mogul, Bernadette Pendragon, (a bad witch) to achieve world domination. He also has to protect Bernadette’s niece Morgan (a good with) from her aunt’s evil plans.
 

Cash spoofs the whole witch’s genre with his clever plot. Very well written with well-developed characters. Also, there wasn’t a whole lot of over-the-top witch weaponry used. One thing I didn’t like was the way Cash tacked on how Wes blew his first case. I sure hope this is the first in a series.

 I give Witches Protection Program 5 out of 5 stars.