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Now Atlanta-based, Tai Randolph owns a Confederate guns and memorabilia shop which does enough business along with battle re-enactments to fill large amounts of her time and efforts. The rest is taken up with her lover Trey who struggles with lingering PTSD issues by hyper-structuring his life, loving and protecting her, and serving as a sort of detective and law agent with a firm called Phoenix – a great name considering that Trey is basically trying to re-construct himself into a functioning adult male human being.
Sadly, Tai's attempt to restructure her own life by cutting ties with and moving away from her unsavory and mostly criminal family in Savannah falls apart when her cousin Jasper sues her for three million dollars and Phoenix for six million because he was severely injured by Trey when Trey stopped him from murdering Tai in a novel before this one which is fifth in this series. At this point Jasper is in prison awaiting trial but has managed to engage the flashiest scum-representing lawyer around, evidently hoping that winning his suits will foot the bill for those services.
Over Trey's misgivings, Tai returns to Savannah to straighten out her family mess once again – there's just enough back story to indicate that her family is the crux around which this mystery series pivots – these people provide Tai with an endless supply of awfulness to resolve. Cousin Jefferson is in trouble with the KKK and Jasper's love interest has disappeared and she's the only one who can testify that Trey's attack on Jasper was in self-defense and therefore not something Trey should be arrested and tried for. Cousin Jefferson has settled down in Daddy Boone's moldering plantation home with a combative wife and two little daughters. Ample evidence of Jefferson's character is the fact that he's turned the backyard fishpond into an alligator pit.
And so forth.
There is a peripheral character, the flashy lawyer's private investigator, whose purpose appears to be to meddle and interfere in everything Tai tries to do, to what purpose never becomes clear. However, this character may become a part of future novels.
Tina Whittle keeps things moving along swiftly and without resorting to using one far-fetched violent episode after another to do so. Tai is a fairly well-drawn protagonist but her relationship with Trey is problematic. I'm not a great fan of PTSD crippled co-protagonists – I keep running into them in new mysteries. The biggest problem with them is that they all look alike, sort of cardboardy, and at the drop of a pin they can blank out and be useless. And they all do. With Trey there is a constant suggestion of uncontrolled violence, even with Tai, and she appears to go along with it. That throws their relationship and her ability to pick a man (she has a disastrous failed and violence-ridden marriage behind her) into serious question.
Overall, I congratulate White on a successful episode in her popular series but I do not feel confident that Tai's horrid family and Trey's disabled condition will be enough to keep it going indefinitely.
§ Diana Borse is retired from teaching English at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and savoring the chance to read as much as she always wanted to.
Reviewed by Diana Borse, May 2016
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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