The Last Place You Look: A Mystery (Roxane Weary, 1) Hardcover – June 13, 2017

Average detective story, featuring plenty of dysfunctional characters. Frankly, I'm tired of detectives ( in this case, a female PI) with alcohol/drug and/or relationship problems. A well-functioning personality would be unique. As for the plot...just ok. Would I read another book in the series ? Doubtful.

4.50 Stars. For my last book of 2019 I was looking for a good mystery to read. This series has been on my radar for a while and I have been itching more recently to read this. I’m glad I picked this because I really enjoying it. It was the kind of book I could not stop reading. Thank goodness I had no work today or I would have been walking around like a zombie since I easily picked reading this over sleep. This is actually a debut for Lepionka which is even more impressive to me. She already writes like a seasoned author so it gives me high hope for the rest of the series.I have loved mysteries since my Nancy Drew childhood days but my absolute favorite type of mysteries usually stars a hard-boiled and flawed private investigator. I like that PI’s can do the work cops can’t or won’t do and that they can get pretty close to crossing over the line since it ends up making for a more interesting story in my opinion. Luckily for me, Roxane Weary fits those points perfectly. She’s is a bit of a mess. She’s not quite at Micky Knight’s (J.M. Redmann) level but she has more issues than an early Kinsey Millhone (Sue Grafton) did. Roxane drinks too much, has trouble letting people close, and has very complicated family relationships, but she has a detective’s gut instinct and deep down she really cares about people. She was the kind of flawed character that I find really easy to like.Since I mostly read/review lesfic I do want to say this doesn’t belong in that category. However, this book does get the LGBTQ tag. Roxane is bisexual and has relationships with both men and women. Both the m/f and wlw sex scenes where fade to black. I was not personally big on either character for Roxanne so I’m keeping my fingers crossed she will discover someone new in book 2.When it came to the actually mystery, I was impressed. I had a guess of who the bad guy/girl was but I was wrong and had instead picked up on a red herring Lepionka put out. I normally have good luck guessing the criminal so I’m always happy when a mystery author can sneak one by me. While the books pace was a little slower at times, the book gradually kept ramping up and up. As a reader you started worrying about time, knowing the mystery need to be solved soon. For those reasons it added a bit of this slightly frantic but excited feeling to the book. It got your heart pumping a bit as the excitement kept building up to a satisfying story climax that all good mystery books should have.If you are a mystery fan this is an easy book to recommend. It is really well done for a debut and just well done period. Books two and three are already out with a book four coming out in 2020. I’m really glad to know I have more of the series to read and I’m looking forward to it. I’m ready for more Roxane.

I read this in a day. I didn't mean to, but that's the kind of book it is. It probably took me 15 pages to get into it, and after that it was just off to the races.Brilliantly written with an urgent plot. If you see the ending coming, you're a better reader than me. The main character is flawed and beautiful and perfect and broken.I think this is my favorite book I've read so far in 2017. Highly recommended.

I'm not a mystery/detective novel fan, but this book made me a convert! I was flipping pages so fast my Kindle could barely keep up. I love the twists and turns, but clues that were understandable and easy to follow (not always the case in books like these). Mostly, though, the characters made it for me. A great cast of realistic, flawed, interesting people that made me truly care about the crime being solved and the protagonist. I like how nothing is as it seems, and nobody's totally innocent or well behaved. Feels very true to human nature.The only problem with this book is that the author doesn't have another one out yet and now I am SO SAD I HAVE TO WAIT!

This is the best mystery/thriller I've read in ages! She had me hooked from the opening straight through to the closing and I read the book in just a couple days.THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK is the story of a sharp private detective who's hired to find a missing woman who disappeared more than a decade before. The trail has gone cold. The local police department is not only unhelpful, but downright obstructive. And our heroine struggles with not just the case, but grief for her father, a police officer recently killed in the line of duty.Exceptionally well written with a great main character who I was rooting for every step of the way, I definitely recommend it for those who love twisty mysteries and fast-paced stories that will keep you up at night.

I couldn't put this book down. Roxane Weary is everything you want from a noir mystery with a private detective -- she's sharp, funny, haunted by her life, imperfect and struggling, but won't let go when she feels like she's asking the right questions.Kristen Lepionka has drawn a character I care about, one I cheered for and cringed with. Not an easy feat, to create a flawed but deeply compelling main character alongside a pulse-pounding, electricity-filled plot line.In short, it's a must read for your summer vacation list.I hope we get to see more of Roxane Weary soon!!!!

Roxane is a total mess: messy love life, messy familial relationships, a job she's been phoning in since her father died. She takes Brad's case mostly because she needs the money, but gets more invested as she investigates. I got more invested too. I kept rooting for Roxane, even when she tried her hardest to get in her own way, because I wanted her to figure this out.I didn't have a clue how the pieces of the case all fit together (all my guesses turned out to be wrong), but it was an entertaining ride the whole way. I've already bought the second book.

Debut US author Kristen Lepionka introduces firebrand private investigator Roxane Weary and puts her own spin on the hard boiled thriller in this impressive novel. Life isn’t treating thirty-four-year-old PI Roxane Weary too well when she meets potential client, Sarah Cook. Having self-medicated on quality whiskey in the nine-months since her father, career cop Frank Weary, was shot in the line of duty she hasn’t actually done much investigating. Pinballing back and forth between casual sex with Frank’s former detective partner, Tom Heitker, and flirting with now married high-school love, Catherine Walsh, she is something of a loose cannon! Complete with a dysfunctional family she has spent her whole life in Columbus, Ohio and is very familiar with the mindset of those that live in the far-flung suburb of Belmont. Whilst Roxane isn’t keen to work, she needs the money and her oldest brother sends mid-thirties and seemingly level headed Danielle Stockton her way. Well, she appears level headed until she specifies her requirement; locating “the girl who can get my brother off death row”.. And with an execution date set for just over two months time, Roxane is up against a ticking time bomb. It certainly seems like an insurmountable task but as Sarah Cook hands Roxane a hefty cheque she has every incentive to get started.Fifteen-years earlier black Bradford Stockton was placed on death row charged with stabbing Garrett and Elaine Cook, the parents of his younger, white girlfriend, seventeen-year-old Sarah. On that night Sarah also disappeared and has since been presumed dead. The case was closed in record time and appeared as open and shut as they come, with the bloodied weapon found in Brad’s car. His refusal to help himself and speculate that perhaps there was another side to the story didn’t help his cause and he has resolutely refused to contemplate Sarah’s involvement. However, a chance sighting of Sarah at an Ohio gas station sees Danielle hire Roxane to track her down. Glimpsed from across the road, in partial darkness and low on specific detail the odds don’t seem favourable. On the basis of the facts presented, Roxane concludes that Brad is more probably guilty and that his sister is delusional! Just where does Roxane go from here given the paucity of details and that Danielle’s companion on that night, Brad’s friend Kenny Brayfield wasn’t convinced by the fleeting glance?Ever resourceful and undeterred, Roxane tracks down the private investigator who assisted on Brad’s trial, Peter Novotny, a man close to eighty who remembers Frank in his heyday and clarifies the specifics of the prosecution. Brad’s failure to offer an alibi, explain how the murder weapon found its way into his car and the absence of Sarah made for the very definition of reasonable doubt. As a licensed private investigator Roxane is allowed entry to the Chillicothe Correctional Institution, but Brad is loathe to play ball and answer the same questions that have plagued him and the fifteen-years that he has languished inside have made him cynical and left a slightly menacing air. Given his initial lack of cooperation and subsequent disclosure about his teenage misdemeanours along the lines of vandalism and his best friend, Kenny, being the regular supplier of weed in Belmont, he does’t appear anyone's idea of a paragon of virtue. As Roxane tracks down thee remaining Cook family relatives, asks around about the missing Sarah and is harassed by a silent and unknown heavy breather repeatedly phoning, she comes up against a brick wall fast, but the mysterious phone calls are enough to believe she has unsettled someone.. The Belmont cops are also keeping a close watch and inordinately concerned with her loitering in the area.As any decent private investigator worth their fee knows, a different approach to a problem can pay dividends and Roxane takes an alternative angle, specifically by looking into the stabbing deaths in Franklin County and hoping to establish a pattern of similar crimes. Her initial probing reveals that her father was assigned to the remarkably similar case of high school dropout and young mum, Mallory Evans, which still remains unresolved. Tracking down Mallory’s husband and daughter she compares the overlap and similarities… and it isn’t just Mallory that seems to have gone missing and all within the small suburb of Belmont. As a location, Belmont smacks of small town suburban America where there are very few notable events and is clearly divided by an ‘invisible line’ which separates the poorer east side from the more affluent, and whiter, west side where the opportunities lie. Whilst Roxane does benefit from some truly fortuitous good luck in her endeavours, Lepionka also introduces a barrage of twists which offer potential for exploration and unexpected detours.However tightly plotted and twisty this case proves, it is some outstanding characterisation that marks this debut out as something mighty special. Smart-mouthed and driven, Roxane Weary is the narrator and addresses her audience throughout in an engaging conversational style. Underneath the spiky and witty exterior, she is hugely self-doubting and in fact rather vulnerable. Roxane is the epitome of a self-deprecating modern female struggling to cope with keeping her life on the straight and narrow. However, it is not just Roxane who magnetises, every one of the supporting cast are pinned down and leave a strong impression, from rich boy and would be gangster, Kenny Brayfield to confused teenager, Shelby Evans.In the final third of this novel, when Roxane is stymied by the Belmont police after numerous run-ins and eventually arrested for criminal trespass, the pace does seem to abate with things becoming a tad repetitive and the plot takes a pause for breath. All credit to Lepionka however, as she leads her readers a merry dance into the denouement, placing one alternative scenario clearly in the frame only to then unleash a totally unexpected conclusion. With one-n as opposed to two, edgy, nosy and impatient Roxane Weary is a modern day heroine to applaud and I look forward immensely to seeing her in action once again!Review written by Rachel Hall (@hallrachel)

Roxane has more problems than you can shake a stick at, grieving for her father, alcoholism, bisexuality and an old car that never breaks down - a diesel in USA! The detection is the old fashioned bit, being very Spenser like - poking around with a spoon and giving everything a good stir - and in the end being lucky. Her personal, family and social life occupy most of the story but it is so much part of the enjoyment that it does not detract from it. Looking forward to the next one.

When is the next Roxane book gona be available????Please Ms Lepionka do not leave us Roxane fans hanging for too long.....I know I can use the term "us Roxane fans"......because there will be thousands of us clamboring for the next adventure....An outstanding debut novel....I read it straight through.....could not put it down....Roxane Weary is an amazing protaganist and I almost feel like I know her in real life.......I do know I want to be her......PLEASE hurry and release her next book as I am already getting withdrawal symtoms.....An amazing....twisting....funny ....breathtaking....suprising novel from an extremly talented authorLolly

This excellent novel combines the best of the traditional PI genre with a very contemporary heroine. Roxane is bisexual - she drinks too much whiskey and has issues with her family. She makes mistakes but her instincts are sound and she ends up saving the day. Highly recommended.

This was a well written story. The only thing I didn’t enjoy was the fact there just wasn’t enough detail on the characters to try and guess who did it. The good things was that once you did get an inkling you were still not sure...Not read this author before so I’ll definitely keep an eye out for more.