Distant Blood

Distant Blood is the final novel in Jeff Abbott's Jordan Poteet series, and it is the book where the small-town Texas formula gets its emotional payoff. Jordan attends a family reunion of distant relations on a private island off the Texas Gulf coast, and the gathering becomes the kind of trapped-with-the-suspects situation the genre rarely commits to with this much patience.

Abbott uses the closed setting to do real work on the long-running characters. Jordan's mother's storyline continues. His romantic life takes its closing turn. The case (the death of one of the distant cousins early in the gathering) provides the structural framework while the actual interest is in what the family has been hiding for forty years.

Four stars. A graceful series closer. Read after the previous three. The Jordan Poteet books are one of the small genuine pleasures of the mid-90s cozy boom.