Jericho Cay: A Bay Tanner Mystery

In Wall's tantalizing 11th mystery set in South Carolina's Lowcountry (after 2010's Canaan's Gate), inquiry agent Bay Tanner takes on a celebrity client, true crime writer Winston Wolfe, who's looking into the two-year-old disappearance of reclusive millionaire Morgan Tyler Bell. Wolfe's convinced Bell's alive and passing himself off as Terry Gerard, Bell's personal assistant who went missing at about the same time from Jericho Cay, a private island Bell owned off Hilton Head. Bay and her husband, Red, a former sheriff's deputy, join Winston in exploring Jericho Cay, where Bell's Jamaican housekeeper, Anjanette Freeman, supposedly killed herself before Bell and Gerard vanished. Wolfe leaves Bay and Red stranded on the island, and later vanishes after making a nervous phone call to Bay for help. The investigation takes some strange twists before this well-done game of cat and mouse reaches its satisfying conclusion. (May)