But for the Grace

Private investigator Molly Piper, a four-foot-nine ex-cop from Chicago, is hired by an irate Washington State politician, Edmond Bercain, to find the people responsible for papering the town of Grace, on an island in Puget Sound, with flyers accusing him of assorted wrongdoings. When he is found murdered the next day, his widow, Kendall, hires Molly to find the killer. Molly's investigation leads her to the Squatters, a group of people who set up a commune in the woods after losing their homes, for which they blame the unscrupulous Bercain. When Molly discovers that Kendall has been having an affair with the group's leader, Denny Lockett, she begins to question the widow's motives. A series of anonymous notes sends Molly all over the island, from a love nest in an abandoned lighthouse to a mysterious white mansion. In the course of the investigation, she befriends several people, including a young man named Mikah, whose negligent mother frequently leaves him to care for his sister, and Denny's brother, Jake, who has been confined to a wheelchair since Bercain ran him over and fled. Brooks (Falling from Grace) peoples the fictional town of Grace with colorful, idiosyncratic characters, which makes for an entertaining, if not very suspenseful, tale. (May)