Nantucket Counterfeit

by

Steven Axelrod

Nantucket Counterfeit, is a murder mystery where we follow Police Chief Henry Kennis in his fifth Nantucket murder investigation this time involving the local Community Theatre.  Kennis, a former LAPD detective, is an intuitive investigator who has found his niche solving crimes in the darker side of the otherwise quiet surroundings of beautiful Nantucket Island. Nantucket Counterfeit is Steven Axelrod’s fifth installment in his Nantucket series of murder mystery novels.

Horst Refn the artistic director in the Nantucket Community Theatre is murdered and shoved into a freezer face first. It looks like quite a violent confrontation and many people dislike Refn enough to bring his life to such a violent end.   Several of the suspects, however, are members of the rich elite of Nantucket and they are reluctant to tell Police Chief Kennis anything.  It turns out that although victim was far from popular, he was in fact much worse than Kennis imagined. 

The author Steven Axelrod is an entertaining writer and the book is very humorous.    I particularly like the exchanges Chief Kennis has with his girlfriend.  Many of the self-deprecating comments he makes are particularly funny.

The one complaint I have about the book is all the lengthy asides that are interjected for no reason.  For example when Kennis discovers a clue about the murder he says:  “It reminded me of the night I figured out Joe Arbogast was sleeping with my ex-wife.”   He then goes on for 11 e-reader pages about Arbogast before he gets back to the point!  There are many asides like this in the book.  I find these very distracting and although they are often funny they are too frequent and for me they make the style cumbersome.  Overall I would give it 3 on 5.

I want to thank NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for providing me with a digital copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.