Bet Your Bones: A Dinah Pelerin Mystery

In Matthews's somewhat contrived follow-up to 2010's Bones of Contention, a wedding takes aspiring anthropologist Dinah Pelerin to Hawaii, where she finds plenty of natural (volcanic) and unnatural (murder) eruptions bubbling under the beautiful surface. It's the second marriage for both Claude Ann Kemper, Dinah's best friend, and "attractive and amiable" Xander Garst, who has strained relations with his grown children, son Jonathan and daughter Lyssa, who's married to race car driver Raif Reid. Xander and his business associates are on the cusp of a huge development deal opposed by Eleanor Kalolo, Xander's sister-in-law, and other locals. Dinah, who has "trust issues," is thrust into the midst of tangled personal relationships as well as money and cultural conflicts, which collide with fatal results. Matthews's effective use of Hawaiian myths, fauna, flora, and volatile geology helps offset the cluttered field of suspects and the unlikely resolution. (June)