Mother Love: Murder in a Small Town

There is a murder here, no question, but readers craving a simple whodunit should look elsewhere: The real mystery is why Maria, a pleasant, placid housewife, abandoned her family for seven years.

This question is nagging at Sergeant Karl Alberg, even as Cassandra Mitchell, Alberg’s longtime companion, is doing some nagging of her own—he had promised, after all, to hang up his policeman’s hat. As always in this series, the great pleasure is ...