For Richer, for Danger (Broken Vows Mystery)

In this second book of the critically acclaimed Broken Vows Mystery series, Jolene Parker and her police-deputy husband Ray have found new love in their life together. They're foster parents for Noelle, an adorable baby whose fugitive birth parents hightailed it out of their touristy Finger Lakes-area town. Jolene and Ray want to make their parenthood official, but the adoption hits a mysterious roadblock when the given name of Noelle's mother traces back to a dead girl. As Jolene races to find the true identity of the birth mother, she discovers an unsolved murder . . . and learns that her family may be in extreme danger. The first book in the series, For Better, For Murder, was a finalist for the 2009 Agatha Award for Best First Novel

Praise:

Bork juggles multiple puzzles deftly in the witty For Better, For Murder.-KIRKUS REVIEWS

In this promising series debut, Bork has created an interesting cast of complex characters that readers will enjoy getting to know.-BOOKLIST

"In Agatha-finalist Bork's winning second Broken Vows mystery set in New York's Finger Lakes region (after 2009's For Better, for Murder), Jolene Parker and her police deputy husband, Ray, have survived near divorce, but may lose the infant daughter they hope to adopt, Noelle, because the bank-robbing fugitive birth mother, who called herself Abigail Bryce, was using a 17-year-old dead girl's identity, rendering all the adoption paperwork worthless. Jolene eventually catches up with the false Abigail in a parking lot, where she's holding a broken beer bottle over her dying boyfriend, who's bleeding from a neck wound. Meanwhile, Jolene must strive to keep her floundering sports car boutique and repair business afloat. When a millionaire summer resident promises a substantial finder's fee for tracking down a specific car for his wife's grandfather, the need for cash outweighs the weirdness of knowing the car will be used as the grandfather's coffin. The various plot lines wind neatly to a bittersweet conclusion. (Sept.) Set in 1943, Baron's third mystery featuring archeologist Lily Sampson (after 2006's The Torch of Tangier) will appeal more to romance readers than history buffs. OSS founder Wild Bill Donovan, whom Lily assisted in Torch with the Allied invasion of North Africa, sends her to Palestine, where she hooks up with Gideon Weil, the hunky director of the American School in Jerusalem. As the pair begin an archeological survey of Trans-Jordan, their Bedouin guide vanishes, only to turn up murdered. After the authorities arrest Gideon, Lily must clear Gideon's name--and keep him from being maimed by a primitive ritual designed to identify the guilty. Sampson also gets involved in a plot to attack an oil pipeline supplying the Nazis, but she makes an unconvincing action heroine. The prose is passable at best ('It takes a year, two sometimes, to recover from a loss. Everyone must grieve in their own way'). (Aug.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright PWyxz LLC)

The first book in the series, For Better, For Murder, is a finalist for the 2009 Agatha Award for Best First Novel!

Jolene Parker and her police-deputy husband Ray have found new love in their life together. They're foster parents for Noelle, an adorable baby whose fugitive birth parents hightailed it out of their touristy Finger Lakes-area town. Jolene and Ray want to make their parenthood official, but the adoption hits a mysterious roadblock when the given name of Noelle's mother traces back to a dead girl. As Jolene races to find the true identity of the secretive birth mother, she discovers an unsolved murder . . . and learns that her family may be in extreme danger.