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WEB OF EVIL
by J. A. Jance
Touchstone, January 2007
368 pages
$25.95
ISBN: 1416537074


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

When California television news reporter Ali Reynolds was fired from her job and then discovered that her husband Paul Grayson, a very popular television news reporter, was cheating on her, she left California to go back to Sedona, Arizona where she was born.

Now, six months later she is driving back to California to sign her divorce papers, and the next day Paul is supposed to marry the very young woman, April Gaddis, he cheated with when he was still married to Ali.

The meeting to sign the papers is held in the home where she and Paul used to live. But Paul never arrives, leaving Ali and the lawyers wondering why Paul never showed up.

Within hours Paul is found dead. He was tied up, locked in the trunk of a car and left on train tracks where he was immediately killed when a train came. Ali is the prime suspect for the murder since Paul didn't sign his new will. That means that Ali is still considered his wife, and his fortune is left to her.

Making matters even worse, Paul's fiancée's bossy mother is also murdered and Ali is suspected of that as well.

Now with the help of her mother, Dave Holman a detective friend from Sedona, her adult son Chris, her father, and all the friends she's made on her blog where she talks about her legal and divorce problems, Ali is determined to find out who really killed Paul and April's mother and why.

The group, headed by Ali, learns that Paul and his business partner made a lot of money by financing a new game, called sumo sudoku puzzles, which is a new form of sudoku where the numbers are blasted onto giant rocks for strong players to place. Don't ask. Anyway, it leads Ali and her team to discover that the game was involved with drug smuggling.

I was really looking forward to reading WEB OF EVIL by JA Jance. I've been a fan of this author for many years, and was excited to read something from her new Ali Reynolds series. I had missed the first in the series and now, after reading this book I doubt if I'll bother reading the first.

Ali is a real know-it-all. Even when her lawyers tell her not to talk to the police or to write anything about her legal problems on her blog, Ali does exactly what she wants to do. Since Ali knows best, she talks to the authorities without her lawyers and blogs everything that happens and even answers emails that her blogging fans send her. Thus she ends up getting into even more trouble.

I found myself getting more and more annoyed with Ali as she placed her own wants above everyone else. She even put one of her old acquaintances in jeopardy, and instead of feeling bad about it, she just shrugged the situation aside, saying that the woman deserved it. After all, whatever Ali wants, Ali gets.

As the book proceeded I found I cared less and less about Ali's situation. I didn't sympathize with anything about this character and I even liked her dead, cheating husband more than I liked her.

The plot was tedious and annoying with Ali and her friends running around looking for clues that the police already knew.

If you want to see the type of writer JA Jance really is, read her older series. Stay clear of Ali Reynolds and WEB OF EVIL. It doesn't do justice to Jance's writing talent.

Reviewed by Sharon Katz, January 2007

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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