After reading Jean Sheldon's most recent book, "The Woman In the Wing" I told Jean I liked her easy to read story and I would some day like to read her earlier books. Jean sent me those first three books and after reading the first one I can see that this series is going to be the same easy-to-read story but with a police heroine as the principal actor. The Chicago Police Department's twenty-third district has a very distinct character working in their detective division. Kerry Grant and her partner, Mike Sullivan work as a team to attempt to solve some of the big city crimes, of which there are many.

Jennifer Kincaid was a court reporter that lived in an old, but decent apartment building. Also in that building lived an older woman, Veronica Cooke with whom Jennifer became friends sharing time and conversation together. Kerry was a computer whiz and became acquainted with Veronica when she had to investigate the payoff of a big insurance policy on Veronica-but-Veronica wasn't dead! Kerry worked the case and taught Veronica many facets of the Internet, how to discover fraud and scams, and when to be suspicious. Eventually Veronica learned enough to start teaching other older people about the pitfalls one could fall into through the Internet. Kerry was selected to lead computer training for the Chicago Police Department since she was clearly the expert in this field.

Kerry was planted as a con artist to help a group running scams of various types on the Internet, being very successful with her infiltration. She worked with and through another plant in the group. This worked out fine until some suspicions showed up and things had to come to a head. Eventually Kerry, Jennifer, and Veronica became great friends and worked together. One day Jennifer was a hostage in her courtroom. This took the story off in another area but soon the connection became apparent.

Jean Sheldon writes in a way that any reader can understand. Her storylines are easy to follow but they are not so simple to become ridiculous. I thoroughly enjoyed "Identity Murder" with its characters and I look forward to reading the other two books in this series. Thanks Jean Sheldon.

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