The Lethal Partner

In Confidence Woman, the third Claire Reynier mystery, the use and abuse of identity entangle Claire in a murder for which she becomes the prime suspect. Clairei s struggles to prove her innocence plunge her into a treacherous and ever-shifting quest to figure out who people really are.Clairei s troubles begin because she helped a down-on-her-luck friend from college, Evelyn Martin, who asked to stay with Claire while deciding where to live and what to do following the loss of her job in Denver. A short time later Claire realizes shei s the victim of identity fraud and thinks Evelyn might be the perpetrator. Not long after, police find the decomposed body of Evelyn in a house she rented in a desirable Santa Fe neighborhood. Also discovered are credit cards with Clairei s name on themi along with credit cards and personal items stolen from three other women Claire and Evelyn knew at college. A rare signed first edition of Herman Melvillei s The Confidence-Man, missing from Clairei s house, is not among the items recovered by police. When a witness tells police about an argument she saw the evening of the murder, and the description fits Claire, suddenly all the twists of fate seemed aligned against her. To establish her innocence, Claire draws on her expertise as a librarian at the University of New Mexicoi s Center for Southwest Research, contacts with rare book dealers, and her ability to see through pretense and guisei in herself and others.


Genre: Mystery