You should have died on Monday, by Frankie Bailey, is the third of her Lizzie Stuart mysteries. They just keep getting better and better.

In this outing, Lizzie bends all her efforts to finding the mother who abandoned her at five days old. With an old post card as her only lead, she travels to Chicago. It does not take long to discover her mother, at twenty-two, was already involved in a relationship with a gangster and, at the same time, with the leader of a group that later becomes associated with the Black Panthers.

When Becca’s close friend suddenly disappears from Chicago, Lizzie follows her to Wilmington, North Carolina and then to New Orleans.

Secrets – who murdered Reuben James and Becca’s lover-gangster – are covered. But one secret, Lizzie’s paternity, remains unknown.

Throughout, Lizzie struggles with the status of her relationship with John Quinn, a man who has his own secrets. Highly Recommended.