BEST HOUSE ON THE BLOCK

The murder of a bullying ex-journalist threatens to rip the lid off the many scandals plaguing a toney Sacramento neighborhood.

Time was that Rosella Marlow was widely respected by her professional peers and her neighbors. In fact, her lovingly preserved home in the Fabulous Forties district won the Best House on the Block award twice. But since her husband and son were killed in a car accident and her house has lost top honors to Chloe Leavitt’s far inferior place, she’s gone off the rails, spying on her neighbors, vowing vengeance for their slights, and becoming the recipient of anonymous notes (“I Know What You Did”) and menacing stick figures. Even Shannon Gibbons, the nobody she’s plucked out of nowhere and moved into the Forties to serve as her researcher and footrest, is put off on their first meeting by her brusque manners and casual cruelty. When Shannon returns the following day, she finds Rosella dying after having been stabbed in the neck by a letter opener. Since there’s no husband left in the picture, Det. Seicinski and Det. Toye elevate Shannon to the top of their list. But that’s only because they don’t know about all the secrets held close by Chloe, who quickly bonds with Shannon, and by Jason and Dianne Abbott, Kaylynn and Nicolas Alcozar, Becky and Holly Bateman, and, yes, their children. Seicinski and Toye will make two arrests before the cascade of unsurprising surprises reveals a killer only Shannon will have failed to suspect.

Expertly paced revelations that disturb the heroine and her new neighbors a lot more than the reader.