Canaan's Gate-Kathryn R. Wall

Canaan's Gate
Kathryn R. Wall
Minotaur, Apr 27 2010, $24.99
ISBN 9780312601843

First Coast Bank of the Carolinas employee Cecelia Dobbs believes caregiver Kendra Blaine has embezzled a million dollars from her clients, elderly couple Thomas and Rebecca Castlemain. Cecilia realizes someone inside the First Coast bank assisted on the swindle. The more she digs, the more she is increasingly convinced that the Hilton Head couple has been cheated.

Kendra asks inquiry agent Bay Tanner to investigate. Before Bay can consider taking on the case, Rebecca dies of a heart attack. The Castlemain grandson Nick Potter suspects Kendra killed his grandma. As such he visits Simpson & Tanner, Inquiry Agents and hires Bay to investigate at about the same time that Cecilia vanishes.

Canaan’s Gate has plenty going on with a complicated case and an almost as complex personal happenings. Bay adapts to the depressing revelation that she is now an “orphan” with the passing of the Judge and she and Red struggle with their respective roles in their new marriages and at the firm. The inquiry is cleverly devised so that the reader is not sure whether to suspect Kendra of felonious activity or not. Readers will enjoy this super entry and look forward to the next one as a hurricane is bearing down the Florida coast.

Harriet Klausner