Murder Online by Beth Anderson

Reviewed by J.B. Scott

Rating System
Excellent Read	*****
Highly Recommended	****
Very Good	***
Good	**
Not Recommended	*

Reviewer Rating: **** Stars
Title: Murder Online
Category: Mystery
Author: Beth Anderson
Publisher: Clocktower Books
ISBN: 0-7433-0068-8
Release Date: October 2000

Beth Anderson, author of the highly acclaimed Night Sounds, offers to her fans, a literary piece, which is sure to be dubbed: the Cyber-Mystery of the millennium…

Enter, Sergeant Detective Martin Slade, of the Violent Crimes Division, Chicago. A very likeable guy, thrown head first, into a case offering very few clues and a whole lot of suspicion, when a talented young girl is brutally murdered in her own home. The murder scene delivers no forced entry, no fingerprints, and too many unanswered questions to make this an ‘open and shut case’. Not to mention, Claire Jensen, mother of the deceased, who is determined to find the murderer of her daughter in her own, no-nonsense way, and prickle under Slade’s skin in the process.

Jensen and Slade are both sucked into the vortex of Cyber-Land, introduced to Chat Room Dwellers going by the call sign of SlowHand, StunGun, and NiceGuy. Are these lonely people, or sinister menacing evil animals, stalking their unsuspecting cyber pray?

Anderson puts you the reader, in front of her fictional monitor of visual expression, where you search --screen for screen, page by page, for possible suspects. As you move through, discovering double-clicking motives, frustrating dead-ends, and a hundred-word-a-minute pace, you won’t be the least bit surprised to only find out – the whodunit of this Cyber-Mystery – when this very talented author wants to reveal it to you.

Anderson provides a highly recommended read with Murder Online. The intriguing plot is very relevant and very subjective of the times. Her dialog is both, entertaining and informative; the characters are four-dimensional, leaping out of the page and into your life. Moreover, Anderson, as only Anderson can, bequeaths to you, the reader, the very conscious thought of ‘who’ exactly are you chatting to, the next time you dial-up.