Edge of Midnight: A Police Chief Susan Wren Mystery

Police chief Susan Wren puzzles out the crimes directly and coincidentally linked to battered woman Cary Black, who flees California for Hampstead, Kans., to escape her abusive husband, cop Mitch Black, in Weir's dark, skillfully plotted seventh outing (after 2003's Up in Smoke ). Cary's contact in Kansas, Kelby Oliver, appears to have vanished, so a desperate Cary temporarily assumes her identity. But when Cary hears a friend back in California was murdered, she knows it's only a matter of time until her husband finds her. What she doesn't know is that Kelby Oliver has enemies of her own, who are also out for retribution. Susan digs up the file from the brutal rape and murder of Lily Farmer two years earlier and pieces together clues to the threats facing Cary and Kelby. Blending the murderous and mundane, Weir deftly ties up the many threads of her tale. (Mar.)