Secrets Shadow: First Cassiot McCabe Mystery

Despite solving a murder, Cassidy McCabe emerges from this soapy melodrama as an ineffectual therapist who gives airheads a bad name. A client, Ryan Hollister, wrote a suicide note before (apparently) killing himself; but Ryan's half-brother, reporter Zach Moran, thinks another hand pulled the trigger and wants Cass, with her privileged information, to help him find the killer. But how much help can she be? Her mind often wanders during therapy sessions (""This gets so boring,"" she thinks while listening to a young woman patient. ""What a bimbo""). She is further distracted by both the critical voice of her mother she carries in her head and the fact that her feckless ex-husband has used her suburban Chicago house as collateral for a loan from the mob and now can't repay it. While Zach and Cass, getting friendlier all the while, sort through the skeletons in the Hollister family closet, Cass hopes that the mob's thugs will stop pestering her if she just ignores them and wonders why she isn't receiving all her phone messages, even though she must repeatedly be reminded that she should lock her back door. The mystery of whodunit pales next to the questions of how this sleuth ever made it through college or got her license. (Apr.)