Moving Target (Alison Reynolds)
Just weeks before her wedding, Ali Reynolds accompanies eightysomething Leland Brooks, her longtime beloved majordomo, to England for his first trip back to his homeland in almost 60 years, a visit that reveals shocking family secrets. Meanwhile, Ali’s fiancé, B. Simpson, head of high-tech security company High Noon Enterprises, is diverted from his international business by the plight of teenage computer wunderkind Lance Tucker. Put in juvenile detention after breaking into his Texas school district’s computer system, Lance is almost fatally injured in what is deemed an accident. But as the bodies pile up, including those of Lance’s math teacher and a maintenance man at the detention center, it’s clear that someone badly wants GHOST, “the cyber version of Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak” that allows undetected web surfing, developed by Lance and his late teacher. In the ninth Ali Reynolds outing (after Deadly Stakes, 2013), Jance adroitly combines well-rounded characterizations and brisk storytelling with high-tech exploits, arson, kidnappings, and a shootout for an entertaining and suspenseful addition to this solid series. --Michele Leber