Young professor Meg Doherty has long held a dark secret. When a renowned professor is viciously murdered at a Manhattan conference, Meg stumbles upon the scene and quickly comes under police scrutiny. It falls to her brother, Shamus, to help prove Meg’s innocence.
The estranged sister and brother we met in Reardon’s debut novel, Shadow Campus, now find they know less about each other than they thought. Caught in NYC’s blinding media spotlight, gilded society and criminal underworld, the pair must confront not only Meg’s secret but a long-suppressed family mystery.
Damned If She Does “artfully stirs” what Kirkus Reviews further describes as a “dangerous cauldron of ambitious scholars.” “Informed and searing” in her “takedown of ivory tower politics,” Kirkus continues, Reardon makes us work for answers.
Did Meg do it? Did the weight of the secret and guilt at not protecting others become too much? Is that what such secrets do – grow until the victim can take no more? Is there really a right time to speak up? Or even in this #MeToo era are women damned if we do and damned if we don’t?
Damned If She Does by Kathleen Reardon
“Crisp dialogue, strong sense of place, an intricate, compelling plot. Damned If She Does is a haunting, powerful crime mystery about secrecy and retribution.”
~ Mark Jonathan Harris, Author and writer/director of three Oscar-winning films: The Redwoods, The Long Way Home and Into The Arms of Strangers
“A more-than-meets-the-eye novel of hatred, love, secrecy, and revenge that will keep you guessing right to the end. You’ll love Reardon’s new book.”
Dorie Clark, Author of Reinventing You and Stand Out
“Finely written and fully engaging, this novel and its characters will linger in the reader’s memory long beyond the final page.”
Michael C. Keith, Author of Stories in the Key of Me and Let Us Now Speak of Extinction
“Reardon has produced an engrossing crime novel that informs the conversation about gender and power in workplaces everywhere.”
David Brancaccio, Emmy winning journalist, host of Marketplace Morning Report