BISHOP’S REACH

Hilton Head CPA Bay Tanner breaks in her new Inquiry Agency with three-and-a-half cases.

Edwin Hollister Hammond III, the black-sheep brother of Adelaide Hammond, has emerged from hiding, though his visit to his moneyed sister can’t be good news. Grace Matheson is convinced that her husband Chuck and his partner Cliff Morningside are looting the company they founded, and maybe up to other hanky-panky together as well. Professional escort Karen Zwilling wants Bay to find the client who raped her and one of her colleagues. One of these cases comes to a swift conclusion when police find the body of Randolph Remington Wade, the presumptive rapist, shot to death, his face bashed beyond recognition. But is it really Wade? And if it is, won’t Karen be the prime suspect? There’s scant time for Bay and her all-but-partner Erik Whiteside (Resurrection Road, 2005, etc.) to puzzle over such questions before her old college roommate, psychiatrist Neddie Halloran, asks her help in tracking down Yancey Sullivan, a druggie pro bono client who’s gone AWOL. One of these cases quickly dries up, but the others miraculously turn out to be connected. And if the master criminal conveniently pops up out of nowhere just in time for the rousing climax, there’s an undeniable pleasure in watching the Junior League types who people Bay’s world mix it up with assorted felonies.

Literate, witty, preposterous.