Book ~ "Small Town Spin" (2014) LynDee Walker

From Goodreads ~ When a superstar athlete's son turns up dead in a tiny town on the Virginia coast, crime reporter Nichelle Clarke gets the inside scoop. But she quickly spies a gaping hole her inner Lois Lane cannot ignore. 

Determined to unravel the mystery, Nichelle fights off paparazzi cameras and an unexpected rival. She uncovers an illegal moonshine operation, a string of copycat suicides and a slew of closets stacked with more skeletons than slingbacks. Chasing a killer who’s a breath from getting away with murder, Nichelle realizes too late the culprit has her number - and it might be up.

 Nichelle is a crime reporter for a newspaper in Richmond, VA.  Grant, one of her colleagues, gives her the head's up that a former football all-star's teenage son, TJ, has committed suicide and they want her to write about it to ensure the story is handled with care.  When Nichelle talks with the boy's parents, Tony and Ashton, she wonders if it was suicide after all.  Then TJ's girlfriend commits suicide days later, Nichelle assumes something is definitely going on.

Nichelle spends a lot of time in the small town where the suicides took place ... everyone knows everyone and everyone is related to everyone.  In the course of her investigation, she digs deeper into moonshine operations, defends a roadhouse bar that has delicious food and scantily clad dancers, and had to put up with the pettiness of a co-worker because he wasn't assigned this story.

In the meantime, she has two men interested in her ... Kyle, a former flame who is an ATF agent, and Joey, who has connections with the Mafia ... and she is very attracted to both.

This is the third in the A Headlines in High Heels Mystery series and the first I've read by this author.  I thought it was okay and entertaining.  It is written in first person perspective, from Nichelle's point of view.  The ending was a surprise and a bit of a stretch but I bought it.  As a head's up, there is some mild swearing.

Though it is part of a series, it works as a stand alone (I hadn't read the previous ones).  There were some references to incidents from the past, though, that there could have been more background provided because I didn't know what going on (like when she sobbed in Kyle's arms and it had something to do with her mother and his father or what had happened to Randy, her mother's ex-fiancé).

There are a lot of references to shoes.  I'm not into shoes but apparently Nichelle is.