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After twenty years away, Abby Shaw returned to Paradise, Colorado, leaving a legal practice and a cheating husband in California, to run Divinity, a candy shop left to her by her Aunt Grace, much to the resentment of her cousins. Since then, her quiet life has been punctuated by the string of murders of the sort that seem to plague life in a small-town cozy. In this fifth installment, she almost runs down a limping man one stormy night, only to hear shots and to see him collapse in the road. Since she didn't want to get out of the car for fear of being shot at and she can't get a signal on her cell phone to call the police, she rousts her brother Wyatt from his bed and insists that he accompany her to the place where the shooting occurred, in case the shooting victim is still alive. (It's unclear what she thought brother Wyatt could do.) There's no one in the road or in any ditch in the area, and, as Wyatt points out, there's no sign of blood. And puzzlingly, she thinks she spots the limping man in a parking lot a few days later. Soon enough a body is found -- this time the victim really is the person Abby saw being shot. There is no identification on the corpse, and the reader shares Abby's frustration in trying to learn his name, until a realtor's secretary tells Abby that he is Lou Hobbs (which turns out not to be his real name). Though a misidentification, it starts Abby on the trail to a solution. The three main female characters are especially vivid - Abby, hell bent on finding out who the mysterious man is and who did him in; Karen, her helper, the only cousin who didn't desert her after she inherited; and Liberty, her newly acquired helper, who is often the voice of reason. The plot drags slightly until Abby learns the (false) identity of the body - understandable because she keeps hitting one wall after another, but once an identification is made, it takes off like a gazelle to a very satisfying conclusion. Loyal readers of this series will not be disappointed and there is the added bonus of candy recipes to sweeten the deal.
Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Devine, January 2009
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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