Fool Me Once: A Tarot Mystery

In Hockensmith and tarot expert Falco’s winning second Tarot mystery (after 2014’s The White Magic Five and Dime), Alanis McLachlan, who has taken over her late mother’s shop, the White Magic Five & Dime, in Berdache, Ariz., draws the wrath of Bill Riggs after she intervenes on the behalf of his wife, Marsha, a victim of domestic abuse. Marsha has resisted seeking an order of protection, despite almost a decade of suffering, but the issue becomes moot after someone batters Bill to death with a bat. When Marsha becomes the obvious suspect, Alanis supplements the official investigation with her own sleuthing, making use of con-man skills that used to be her mother’s stock-in-trade. Hockensmith manages to keep things light with humorous asides (one suspect looks like “He-Man after two decades of retirement and two thousand visits to the Golden Corral all-you-can-eat buffet”). [em]Agent: Josh Getzler, Hannigan Salky Getzler Agency. (Aug.) [/em]