Give the Devil His Due: A Tarot Mystery

At the start of Hockensmith and Falco’s sprightly third Tarot mystery (after 2015’s Fool Me Once), Alanis McLachlan gets a major-league shock when her con-man surrogate father, Biddle, shows up at the White Magic Five and Dime, the store Alanis inherited from her late con-artist mother, in Berdache, Ariz. Alanis believed he died 30 years earlier after angry gangsters took him for a walk into an Ohio cornfield from which he never returned. Biddle’s resurrection coincides with the odd disappearance of a customer, who vanished after asking to use the White Magic’s restroom. And Alanis, who narrowly escapes being run down by a car, becomes a person of interest to the local police after another customer, who identified himself to her as Mike Brown, CPA, is found dead with one of her business cards in his possession. The authors keep the surprises coming while maintaining a consistently humorous tone. [em]Agent: Josh Getzler, Hannigan Salky Getzler Agency. (Apr.) [/em]