Search - Daughter of Deceit (Family Tree, Bk 3)

DAUGHTER OF DECEIT is the third Family Tree Mystery with Atlanta’s reluctant genealogist Katharine Murray. This seemingly cozy mystery dumps the genre and reads like a conventional novel: no murder in the first chapter, no small town. Atlanta’s Buckhead, the society neighborhood, is tied with an excursion into rural North Georgia. Patricia Sprinkle’s plotting lives up to these challenges: the cozy motif (colorful characters and drawn out suspense, interesting regional detail) is coupled with the delay of the murder. Not only is the reader trying to decide who is going to do it, but who is going to be done in. There are a couple of potential victims, lots of weasels and a plethora of motives from which to choose. DAUGHTER is summed up by one of the weasels who accuses Katharine, “You like solving mysteries, don’t you? And murders. Genealogy isn’t serious for you. It’s just a pretext for sticking your nose into other people’s business.”

Katharine Murray's elegant Atlanta home has been viciously vandalized! She's prepared to devote all her time to getting it back in tip-top shapeâ€"until she meets Bara Weidenauer. Once a picture-perfect socialite, Bara has fallen on some hard times. Her husband, Foley, has hightailed it out of their marriage, and she's convinced he'll try to take her for every penny she's got. While scouring her house for anything of value to hide from her greedy ex, Bara finds a box of military medals that once belonged to her father, a beloved war hero. Eager to know the story behind these precious trinkets, she enlists Katharine's help.

But as Katharine digs deeper into Weidenauer family history, she discovers that everything Bara believed about her father may have been a lie. And when Foley is found shot to death, Bara's world turns to complete chaos. It's up to Katharine to expose this family's secrets from the past and the present . . . or the future will be very grim indeed.

Nice book. Touches upon several different issues. However, it is not a very in-depth book.