Description:
In the opening scenes of Death on the River Walk, the veteran journalist and crime solver Henrietta O'Dwyer Collins (better known to mystery lovers as Henrie O) has a rendezvous with the matriarch of a San Antonio family. She says of this encounter with Maria Elena Garza: We regarded each other. Her hair was as dark as mine, though mine does not have a raven gloss. My face is the more lined, hers smooth with a creamy complexion. I'm afraid that through years of asking questions and so often hearing lies or distortions, perhaps my gaze is more skeptical than accepting. But in the warmth of her regard, I felt my own defenses crumbling. She looked at me with eyes that have surely seen as much as mine and yet there was an eagerness and a vivacity I have lost. This perceptive self-knowledge gives Carolyn Hart's Henrie O books an extra ingredient not always present in mystery series--characters who display real-life emotions, vulnerabilities, and weaknesses, who we can easily empathize with. The circumstances in which Henrie O meets with the woman are troubling to say the least. Maria Elena Garza owns an art gallery on San Antonio's River Walk, and one of her young female employees has disappeared. A member of the large Garza tribe is a prime suspect in the girl's vanishing act. Although the potential scenarios under consideration aren't particularly profound or surprising, the milieu (a lovely shop full of gorgeous objects), the characters, and the bracing Henrie O herself are well worth the price of admission. Other Henrie O books include Death in Lovers' Lane and Death in Paradise --Dick Adler
| 
