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Holly Blues is the China Bayles novel where Susan Wittig Albert pulls on the marriage threads that the series has been quietly setting up for years. McQuaid's troubled ex-wife Sally arrives at the Pecan Springs house on Christmas Eve, unsettled and clearly in some kind of trouble, and the personal storyline takes more of the book than the mystery does.
This is a deliberate move and it works. The series has earned the right to spend a book on the family dynamics, and Albert handles Sally with care: she is exasperating and damaged and not a villain, even when the easier choice would have been to make her one. The mystery itself involves Sally's past and the people who are looking for her.
Four stars. One of the more emotionally serious entries in the series, and a useful one for readers who want to see what cozy mystery can do when it slows down. Read after enough of the earlier books to know who Sally is.
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