Loyalty
You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family, goes the saying. Boston PI Fina Ludlow knows this all too well. When her sister-in-law Melanie goes missing, Ludlow probes the depths of her high-powered lawyer family in search of answers. No one is above suspicion, and Melanie’s husband, Rand, is at the top of her list. Was infidelity the reason behind Melanie’s disappearance? Rand insists he wasn’t unfaithful, but Ludlow knows how slippery her brother can be. Ludlow works to gather information from those closest to her sister, from her best girlfriends to her beautiful teenage daughter, who seems to be engaged in some dubious behavior of her own. Ludlow has the shrewdness of her parents and siblings (she knows getting information often requires descending into the city’s underbelly), but she has compassion, too. Fans of the Kinsey Millhone mysteries will enjoy this engaging, if a bit predictable, debut. --Allison Block