The Murder of Emma Brown

This short murder mystery is packed full with interesting twists and turns. Emma Brown's best friend is Charlotte Martin.  Charlotte drinks excessively, takes plenty of drugs and is a bad influence on Emma.  Emma has future plans of owning a business and refrains from pharmaceuticals as best as she can.  However, one night the two women go out partying in their hometown on Saskatoon in Saskatchewan, Canada. Only one of them returns home. Major Crimes Division inspectors William Gagnon and Scarlett Gauthier have to find a killer.  Someone severely beat and strangled a woman to death with bare hands and a leather belt. At first they think that only a man could have committed the crime.  It would have taken someone strong to strangle Emma as hard as her wounds showed.  Scarlett believes that it could have been a woman though. They wonder whether a gang war had broken out as two young people were killed in a single night in town.  Friends and relatives turn on each other, battling it out on Facebook and blaming each other for Emma's death.

While it was obvious who killed Emma, it was interesting to read how the killer's memories of the day of the crime were revealed. The killer had blacked out and could not remember what happened that night.  Through reading social media posts about the party, the killer was able to recover some memories but not all of them.  The police felt that they knew who the guilty party was but were unable to obtain a confession. There was no character development here.  If there had been I am sure that this 205 page book would have been longer and with more mystery. It is strictly a whodunnit. 

3 out of 5 stars.