Judas Island: A Bay Tanner Mystery (Bay Tanner Mysteries)
Set in South Carolina's low country, Wall's cozy series featuring widowed accountant Bay Tanner gets better with each book. In her fourth outing (after 2003'sPerdition House), Bay returns home from an extended stay in Paris to find that her father, the Simpson part of Simpson & Tanner, Inquiry Agents, is making regular and significant payments to a mysterious visitor. When Judge Simpson refuses to answer Bay's questions about what's going on, Bay is stumped. How could her father be a blackmailer's target? Meanwhile, an old college friend of computer expert Eric Whiteside, with whom Bay started Simpson & Tanner, is killed in a freak boating accident, leaving a not-so-grieving father and a girlfriend who insists the death was murder. Wall manages to keep several seemingly unconnected story lines in play, building suspense gradually until things fall neatly into place. Her greatest strength, however, is her heroine, who exudes self-confidence whether auditing the books of a shrimping company or consulting a forensics expert. Bay's wry observation on how middle-aged women are invisible to waitresses if an attractive man is nearby cuts to the bone, but is made without rancor. Wall should continue to build a following among fans of older female sleuths.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.