I have always enjoyed the Barbara Holloway series and one night, unable to sleep, I picked this on one of my listening devices, and started listening. The initial premise hooks you right away. Elizabeth Kurtz flees her nere-do-well ex-husband after she discover a file of documents that, we learn later but suspect from the beginning, has information that will damage her ex-husband’s father’s corporation. The father is on death’s door and her ex- is desperately trying to find a document that would assign him part of the corporation before his father dies and his mother can retrieve it. Or so we are lead to believe. Elizabeth’s ex-mother-in-law hates Elizabeth and her grandson Jason.Elizabeth flees with her son attempting to hide (why she hides in the father-in-law’s cabin in the woods seemed ill-advised or at the very least dumb.) Barbara, hiding from her own demons and a proposal from her boyfriend (another strange reaction,) is found by a frantic Jason on a deserted beach seeking help for his mother who has suffered what appears to be a beating. Elizabeth makes the woman as comfortable as possible, but when she and her cabin’s caretaker arrive back on the scene, both the boy and his mother are gone. Barbara returns home to discover she is suspected of complicity in the suspected kidnapping of Jason and killing of his mother. The plot thickens as Elizabeth and Barbara try to avoid the law and the killers and still maintain some important secrets. The denouement was reminiscent of the classic Rex Stout and Agatha Christie where the detective/lawyer gets the principles in a room and forces out the truth.
Personally, I would have preferred more courtroom antics and less personal soul-searching by Barbara over Darren, her on-again-off-again boyfriend. Some of the antagonism with the police seemed forced and my eyes kept rolling back into my head as I remarked to myself, “come on, people, if you sat down and everyone explained what they knew,. . . Then again, I suppose there would have been no story. Still, an enjoyable audiobook.
