Nightshade-Susan Wittig Albert

Nightshade
Susan Wittig Albert
Berkley, April 2008, $23.95, 304 pp.
ISBN: 9780425219560

Recently, China Boyles learned she had an illegitimate half-brother Miles sired by her father on his secretary Laura who worked in his law firm. He never knew the man he called uncle was really his dad until his biological father died leading to Miles finding letters written to his mother. They implied he was in danger and so were Laura and Miles. Miles believes that the car accident that killed his father was in reality a murder.

China is not interested in reconnecting with her past to find out if her father was murdered but her husband McQuaid, now a private detective, is very interested for numerous reasons. When Miles thinks he located the car that his father died in, he asks McQuaid to meet him at a designated spot. When he doesn’t show up, China and McQuaid learn he was killed in the garage where he parks his car for work. McQuaid is determined to carry on with the investigation and when he goes to the location of where the car is supposed to be the woman who is holding on to it looks like she is dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. McQuaid is sure that it was attempted murder and when he pools his information with the info on the tape Laura made that China found, they go to confront someone who might have the answers not knowing that China is in danger of getting shot.

NIGHTSHADE is one of the best books in the China Bayles series. The story is told in the first person POV from the perspectives of China and McQuaid allowing fans for the first time to understand how he thinks. They will love what they learn especially how he sees his wife and his feelings about her that he is too macho to articulate. The mystery is well thought out and the killings in the present have roots in the past. Susan Wittig Albert always delivers a fantastic mystery.

Harriet Klausner