Overturned

Nikki Tate's father has been on death row for the last five years after being convicted of the murder of one of his best friends.  New evidence has come to light which exonerates him, and now he's coming home.

Nikki and her mom should be happy, and they are, but a lot has changed in five years.  Her mom has never been good at business, so Nikki has been shouldering much of the burden for running the family's failing casino/hotel, Andromeda's Palace.

But she has a plan to get out of Vegas, she's been using the poker skills her dad taught her to run and win illegal games in the basement of the casino.  She's saving for college tuition in Virginia, as far away from Vegas as she can get.

But her father can't seem to settle into life as a free man and is gone from the hotel most nights.  Then his body is found in the alley behind the hotel, killed the same way as the victim in the case that landed him in prison.  Nikki is devastated and becomes obsessed with solving the case.

She won't stop no matter what even when she is warned away.  To make matters worse, she's been dating a boy whose father owns another hotel/casino, and she's beginning to wonder if the rumors about mafia connections are true.  Does Davis's father have something to do with her father's murder?

Lamar Giles's murder mystery set in the Las Vegas underbelly is grittier than I expected.  It's a good mystery but a little unbelievable that Nikki could go into so many dangerous situations and always emerge unscathed.  It reminded me a little of Veronica Mars, but Veronica always knew not to go up against a motorcycle gang without backup.