Murder Happens

Solving murders isn’t part of Devin Cleary’s job description. As a security guard at Lincoln Court, a small boutique shopping mall in Urbana, Illinois, he has busted shoplifters, prevented the homeless from making the mall their home, and even rousted a few bathroom dope-smokers. When the mall becomes the site of multiple murders, Cleary is caught up in a web of intrigue that may involve a contractor’s ambitions for redeveloping Lincoln Court into a megamall. He is positioned to sniff out clues that the police miss. By the world’s standards, Devin Cleary is a loser. The only hope for Lincoln Court’s survival lies with that contractor’s plans, which the owners of the mall oppose, and on support for them, if elected, of a candidate for governor who sets up campaign headquarters there— until those murders cast a pall over that hope.