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Because so many police in his small town of Post Oak in East Texas are off sick, widower Judge Jackson Crain is asked to look into the murder of real-estate go getter Tom Delgado when his body is found shot as he is still sitting at his desk. If you ask the people in the town, most think that his wife Dovie is the prime suspect. It seems that though she pretty much built Tom's business with her money, he has been known to go out with other women while spending money like there was no tomorrow. And lately he had been saying that he had found religion with the help of glamorous and attractive evangelist Sister Mary Dobbs McDermott. It seems more like she is guilty when the will is read and Tom left everything except the family home to Sister Mary! As the Judge investigates the murder he discovers that more people had bad feelings towards Tom than anyone knew. But then again, the Judge is going through some unsettling things in his personal life too. The woman he has been romancing doesn't have time for him and he finds that he is terribly attracted to an artist, Roxanne Kruger; who has just lost her mother. Furthermore, the Judge's daughter, Patty, the former light and hope of his life, is acting a bit too much like a teenager for his happiness. She is suddenly moody and secretive and the Judge hears that her best friend, the little girl she grew up with is also suddenly behaving like a wild teen, hanging out with the fast crowd, Even though the Judge's life is suddenly very busy, he still needs to find the killer, as more murders happen. If he doesn't solve the case, he knows that his small town's inhabitants can never go back to trusting their neighbors as they have always done. This is the third Judge Jackson Crain mystery and I am surprised because it read as if the author is already tired of the main character. The story is quite thin and I got the feeling that the author wrote the murderer's confession first. Then it looked as if she followed the confession to piece together a rather dry story. The character of Judge Jackson Crain also doesn't read very much like a male of any age and I wasn't able to get a solid feel for him. His days seem to be filled with sending and answering phone messages, questioning everyone in town about the murder and stopping for meals and a few word with his various contacts. Though he manages to talk to everyone in town, he doesn't have much of a talent for figuring out murders. If the killer had not carelessly left a clue, I guess the guilty party still would have confessed just to stop from having to talk to the judge one more time.
Reviewed by A.L. Katz, September 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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