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On a desolate ranch in Northern Arizona, Modesty Breck is awakened by an unfamiliar noise. She is old and has lived on the ranch for most of her life, so she knows the night sounds well. A man wearing a ski mask has broken into her house. He wants the paintings she owns, but she will not give them up. Her .22 squirrel gun misfires, he hits her, she falls and dies. Score, for he is the burglar, burns down the house and barn and tells his employer that the paintings burned with it. Meanwhile, on the Colorado, Jillian Breck, Modesty's only living relative, is guiding Joe Faroe and his 16-year old son, Lane, on a white water rafting trip. Lane makes a mistake which endangers his life, Jill saves him, and Joe thanks her by giving her his card. He is an executive in St Kilda Consulting, a security company. He tells her that if she ever needs anything to call. Jill returns to the Breck homestead where she grew up. Her mother got fed up when her Mormon fundamentalist husband took his fifth wife. As a child, Jill had seen a mysterious cache of paintings hidden in the attic but was told never to go near them again. She cannot understand why her great-aunt was killed for these paintings. The Mormon sheriff insists that Modesty caused the fire herself because she tried to pour more oil into the stove while it was hot. Jill knows this is not true and tries to follow the trail herself but gets into trouble. She calls St Kilda's and Zach Balfour is sent to deal with the problems she encounters while tracing her aunt's murderer. Apparently, Lowell has written twelve books on her own and eight with her husband. This is the fourth in the St, Kilda Consulting series, although it does well as a stand-alone. I liked the Breck women, independent and strong (although Justine, Jill's grandmother, was a bit of a maverick), but on the whole, the characters were not well developed and the sex scenes were laughable and totally unnecessary. The story was entertaining. It is always fun to diss pretentious people like art dealers and collectors, but on the whole, I doubt I'll go out of my way to read another in the series.
Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, June 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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