Bet Your Bones

Jeanne Matthews novel, Bet Your Bones, is the second in a new mystery series staring Dinah Pelerin. Dinah is surprised to get a letter from her best friend, Claude Ann announcing she is divorced and engaged to be married after a six week whirlwind romance. Dinah flies to Hawaii to act as maid of honor for her childhood friend, get the scoop on the divorce, check out the groom and perhaps persuade Claude Ann not to be so hasty in remarrying.

Because Xander, the groom, is a volcanologist, he and Claude Ann are being married on the tip of a volcano. His first wife committed suicide by jumping off a cliff into the ocean many years earlier. There is a rift between Xander, his son, daughter and her husband, a race car driver. A passenger on the airplane told Dinah a man had died after falling in a volcano steam vent a week prior. Police were still trying to identify the man and determine cause of death. Locals are protesting due to Xander's pending sale of scared lands or prime Hawaiian oceanfront property.

The protestors promised the wrath of Pele, Goddess who created the volcanoes. if the land is desecrated by humans intent on developing real estate. Claude Ann's young daughter is a Bible toting Christian offering up her own brand of hellfire due to her parents divorce and her mother's pending marriage. Dinah is not superstitious, but earthquakes, aftershocks, lava flows, a volcano eruption, and murder of a member of the groom's family have her wondering about the Hawaiian myths and Christian ideology.

Bet Your Bones will not answer mystery of life questions but the conflicts make for interesting reading. Matthews does a wonderful job transporting readers to Hawaii, bringing local culture alive via the written word. Dinah is not a private eye or police detective; her degree is in cultural anthropology. My unanswered question is why she became actively involved in trying to solve the murder. Other than curiosity or boredom due to the delayed wedding, it seemed questioning potential suspects was a police matter, not Dinah's concern.

Of course, if she had not, Dinah would not have put herself in harm's way facing life-threatening situations. Bet Your Bones is not exactly a page-turner, but offers a lot of suspense with many plot twists and turns, which will hold a readers interest to the end. There is also a bit of wry humor tucked between the 309 pages of this whodunit novel. I recommend it.

Copyright 2011 by Jeanne Matthews, Bet Your Bones was published by Poisoned Pen Press with a paperback cover price of $14.95. Visit www.jeannematthews.com for more information on author.