Swollen Identity (McCall & Company Book 2) – a Review

Some people seem to have a knack for getting themselves in trouble and embroiled in hard-to-get-out-of situations. Kate McCall is one of those people. What presents itself to her as a simple case always turns out to be so much more, and because of that, she winds up about to be arrested, handcuffed and arrested, almost getting killed, or all three. I guess you could say that her life is anything but boring.

A new play is in the making, and it promises to be full of chaos and just as much of a train wreck just as the last one was. But would being an actress in any other kind of play make Kate happy?

Brooke Barrington was too much of everything: rich, beautiful, intelligent, poised, etc., and she hires McCall to find out who had stolen her identity. Is someone just into stealing identities, or is something awry in the world of digital art?

To make things really confusing, Brooke has a twin sister, Bailey. Kate ends up being hired by both of them, or is it just one of them pretending to be both? Brooke and Bailey look so much alike that there is no way of telling who is who. At least that is what they think.

Fu, a Chinese killing machine, is a hulk of a man who loves birds—he will put birdfeed in his huge hands and birds will come eat it. He can also cook like Martha Stewart. Yet he has killed so many that he swore off killing people. And he won’t allow any harm to come to Kate.

Another man has been murdered exactly the same way McCall’s dad was, so Kate decides she is going to investigate this murder too because she wants, more than anything, to find the man who killed her dad. This search pushes her into a world of counterfeiting where her life and the lives of her friends are on the line.

On a side note, this part of Kate’s life reminds me of the television series Monk. For the entire eight seasons that the show ran, with every case he solved, Monk was hunting for his wife’s killer. He didn’t succeed in finding him until the very last episode. How long will it be before Kate discovers who killed her dad?

And this book does raise an interesting question: is it possible for a woman to kiss like a man?

I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. If you would like to purchase your own copy, I’ve provided an Amazon link for you below.

Amazon Link: Swollen Identity (McCall & Company Book 2)

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Favorite Sentences:
Brooke Barrington was perfect, and in New York City—maybe more than anywhere else—perfect is trouble.

Keeping things quiet in the House of Emotional Tics was like trying to hold water in a net.

Like a Goodyear tire, her brain had turned to vulcanized rubber.

On the one hand, I might have been the worst fraudulent therapist in the history of fraudulent therapy.

With his baby-blue Con Ed hardhat, yellow safety vest, blue jeans, work boots, and dark-blue hoodie, he looked like a gas man who had died badly on the job and come back to seek some natural gas revenge on the living.

New Words Learned:
bō staff – a very tall and long staff weapon used in Okinawa and feudal Japan. Bō are typically around 1.8 m (71 in) long and used in Japanese martial arts, in particular bōjutsu

bōjutsu – the martial art of using a staff weapon called bō which simply means “staff”

gunite – a mixture of cement, sand or crushed slag, and water, sprayed over reinforcement as a lightweight concrete construction.

intaglio – a process in which a design, text, etc., is engraved into the surface of a plate so that when ink is applied and the excess is wiped off, ink remains in the grooves and is transferred to paper in printing, as in engraving or etching.

 penne puttanesca – literally “spaghetti in the style of a whore” in Italian) is an Italian pasta dish invented in Naples in the mid-20th century. Its ingredients typically include tomatoes, olive oil, anchovies, olives, capers, and garlic.

schneid – a losing streak

About the Author:
Rich Leder has been a working writer for more than two decades. His screen credits include 18 produced television films for CBS, Lifetime, and Hallmark, feature films for Paramount Pictures, Tri-Star Pictures, and Left Bank Films, and four novels for Laugh Riot Press.

He has been the lead singer in a Detroit rock band, a restaurateur, a Little League coach, an indie film director, a literacy tutor, a magazine editor, a screenwriting coach, a PTA board member, a commercial real estate agent, and a visiting artist for the University of North Carolina Wilmington Film Studies Department, among other things, all of which, it turns out, was grist for the mill. He resides on the North Carolina coast with his awesome wife, Lulu, and is sustained by the visits home of their three children.

  2 comments for “Swollen Identity (McCall & Company Book 2) – a Review

  1. Thank you for upbeat review, Lisa. What fun to be a part of your cool blog. I’m sure I speak for all indie authors when I say that your support means everything to me.

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