SHADOW OF DOUBT

Bay Area lawyer Kali O'Brien, back in her hometown of Silver Creek, Calif., to bury her father, finds skeletons (not his) leaping out of every closet. But, first, another death: Eddie Marrero, the high-school coach who, despite marriage and four daughters with Kali's old friend Jannine, isn't too occupied to make a brief pass at her and ask if he can consult her professionally the night before he gets shot with Jannine's own gun. The local police chief, an unimaginative soul—though he turns out to have unsuspected depths—can't be bothered looking any further than the widow, so Kali, agreeing to lend Jannine a hand, checks for witnesses to her alibi (none), hunts for the $10,000 Eddie must've had on hand in order to buy his sister Susie's share of the bar their late father had owned with his brother George (not a trace), and tries to implicate Uncle George in the murder (bingo). A missing babysitter will lead Kali to an extravagant series of adulterous revelations and a culprit as unsurprising as the new man waiting in the wings to win the heart she thinks she's left in San Francisco. Fans of Jacobs's two well-bred suburban California mysteries starring art consultant Kate Austen (Murder Among Friends, 1995, etc.) will be comforted to know that neither Kali nor Silver Creek is much of a stretch.