Kathleen Hills spent the first forty years of her life in rural northern Minnesota before leaving for the real world and a career in speech and language pathology. After determining that ten years in the real world should be all that is demanded of anyone, she turned to writing. Her first novel, Past Imperfect, is available from Poisoned Pen Press. Kathleen divides her time between her home in Duluth, Minnesota and North Scotland and is currently at work on a third John McIntire mystery. http://www.kathleenhills.com/
Hills, in ''Past Imperfect''(Poisoned Pen Press, $24.95), uses small-town Michigan in the 1950s to frame her story. A career military man returns to his childhood home to retire as the town constable. His boyhood chum dies, and as the constable looks into what appears to be an accidental death, he comes to suspect murder. The more he pokes and pries, the more secrets he discovers in the seemingly innocent town. This, too, sounds like a cliche, but Hills handles her plot beautifully, and she is particularly good at capturing speech, which is fitting for a retired speech pathologist. I look forward to more. <br>-Robin Winks, Boston Globe