DEAD WEIGHT

A Texas romance writer’s marriage may just be ruined by her inability to keep her nose out of mysterious deaths.

Now that E.J. Pugh (Full Circle, 2011, etc.) has dropped some serious pounds, she’s disquieted to learn that a member of her weight-loss group, Berta Harris, is dead under mysterious circumstances. Although she’s more than busy with her 18-year-old son, Graham; her rebellious 15-year-old daughter, Megan; Bess, the girl she and her husband Willis adopted when her parents were murdered; and Alicia, their former foster child, she can’t keep from sleuthing. Berta was living in a flip house belonging to her realtor friend Kerry Killian, who’s soon found brutally murdered. Not so for Berta, who turns up very much alive, with no memory of who she really is, where she came from or who might want her dead. Kerry’s husband, Ken, takes her in; E.J. is determined to discover her identity. After a fight with E.J., Willis goes home to his mother, leaving E.J with full hands but with nobody except Luna, the police officer next door, to look askance at her sleuthing. At length, the police arrest Berta, whom they’ve identified as Rosalee Bunch, for the murder of her mother in a trailer explosion they think Rosalee caused years ago. Uncovering the high school friendship between Rosalee and Kerry and finding the identity of several others always seen with them in pictures from their school days, E.J. hopes she’ll soon learn the answers she seeks.   

E.J.’s fans, happy to see the continuing characters further fleshed out, will forgive the fact that this time the chase is more interesting than the capture.