Nightshade

Nightshade is the China Bayles novel where Susan Wittig Albert finally pays off long-running material about China's father, a Houston attorney whose death years before was officially accidental and almost certainly was not. The investigation gets new fuel when a half-brother China did not know existed turns up with information that connects the death to a current Pecan Springs case.

What Albert is doing here is the kind of long-arc payoff that mid-decade cozy series rarely commit to. The personal stakes for China are real. The herbal-lore frame (the nightshade family of plants and their uses) is genuinely creepy. McQuaid, her husband, is given more to do than usual and the marriage scenes have weight.

Four stars. The book stands on its own but is significantly richer if you have read the earlier entries that set up the father storyline. Solid late-period China Bayles.