CRUEL INTENT

Can an ex–TV anchorwoman find happiness rehabbing her fixer-upper while a serial killer stalks the premises?

In the aftermath of severe emotional trauma—the loss of career, her husband and nearly her life (Web of Evil, 2007)—Ali Reynolds has spent considerable time trying to put herself together again. Now she’s tackling a similar reconstruction job on Arabella Ashcroft’s beat-up old mansion. She sees the house as both a fixer-upper and a starter-over, “as her personal rehabilitation project.” What with one thing and another, however, the job has been progressing at a Blandings-like pace. Suddenly it comes to a dead stop when Morgan Forester, the cheating wife of Ali’s head contractor Bryan Forester, is brutally murdered, an unsettling development compounded by Bryan’s arrest. Not only do the cops like Bryan in the role of homicidal husband, but apparently the entire population of Sedona, Ariz., does as well—all except for Ali, that formidable majority of one. Where others see evidence, she sees a frame-up. That’s fortunate for Bryan and just too bad for a certain brilliant but overmatched serial killer from out of left field.

Jance’s good guys can be maddeningly virtuous, her villains double-dyed, her prose no more polished than See Spot Run, but none of that matters to her fan base because this veteran of 37 novels has the knack.