Sallie Bissell, Legacy of Masks

Legacy of Masks

Sallie Bissell

Bantam, Apr 2005, $23.00, 352 pp.

ISBN: 0553802798

Mary Crow has returned to Hartsville before (see IN THE FOREST OF HARM), but this time she is serious about staying. She broke with her anthropologist boyfriend Gabe while they were in Peru and quit her job as an ADA to seek work as a prosecutor or in a law firm in the North Carolina Mountains. No offer has come as no one believes that "Killer Crow" will remain here after seventeen years in Atlanta; so she opens up her own office.

Her first major case will not endear Mary with the bigwigs. The police suspect Ridge Standingdeer killed his girlfriend Bethany Daws. Mary believes her client is innocent, but her only help comes from two preadolescents, including Kayla, the sister of the victim. Meanwhile, sexual predator Deke Keener, the wealthiest person in the country with major political ties due to his construction company, targets Kayla as his next squeeze, but needs to keep Mary occupied, perhaps with some of his legal business.

The fourth Mary Crow tale returns her to her hometown where with exception of Kayla and hunk Jonathan Walkingstick no one wants her to stay. Her efforts to obtain work are met with resistance because of her stellar reputation making her seem over-skilled and the fact that she did kill the corrupt sheriff on a previous visit; even the native tribe rejects her offer of council. The who-done-it is not quite as thrilling as Crow's previous efforts, but the audience will appreciate her cat and mouse game with this clever predator who uses money, contacts, and racism to hide his being a killing pedophile.

Harriet Klausner