December 2006

The Killing Club is a debut mystery by Marcie Walsh. For a first mystery, this has all the elements necessary to keep a reader interested. The story begins with Jamie Ferrera, a detective sergeant with the Gloria, New Jersey Police Department investigating the homicide of a former high school classmate. Over a decade earlier, four high school students including the victim and Ferrera, formed a group calling themselves "The Killing Club". They met in an abandoned building owned by the family of one of the members. There they described in their "Death Book", how they would like to see particular people die. As Ferrera begins to investigate the death of Ben Tymosz, she is extremely alarmed, as the findings are exactly as were written in the "book" ten years earlier, by Ben himself. When the club re-unites at Ben's funeral, another "Death Book" murder occurs, just as documented, and death threats arrive at Ferrera's home, with details only the club members would know, she is more than worried. As the investigation continues, Jamie is compelled to turn to the past, and life-long friends become suspects. As she strolls down memory lane, some things just don't add up. Before she became a police officer, the death of a classmate during the winter of her senior year, seemed nothing more than a teenage suicide. Now, as she looks back, and re-opens the old case, her cop instincts tell another story. Killing Club member, Lyall Hillier left a note in his coat, and seemingly walked out onto a frozen pond, broke the ice, and disappeared. His body was never found. Now she's not so sure.

Ferrera digs through the attic of her home and into her old high school memorabilia to find the death books, amid old term papers. She decides to check the whereabouts of former members, and the results are alarming. Three members of the Killing Club are dead before they turned thirty. Coincidence? Probably not.

I found reading this debut mystery to be time well spent. Marcie Walsh is a character on the daytime soap opera, One Life to Live. Kathy Brier created the role of Marcie, and also went on to appear on hit Broadway productions, such as Hairspray and Grease. She currently resides in Manhattan, and in addition to acting and writing, she loves to read and swim.