To Love and to Perish: A Broken Vows Mystery

In Bork’s satisfying fourth Broken Vows mystery (after 2011’s In Sickness and in Death), a pleasant afternoon at the Vintage Grand Prix Festival in Watkins Glen, N.Y., becomes anything but for car dealer Jolene Parker when Brennan Rowe, the boyfriend of her mechanic, Cory Kempe, is accused of killing James Gleason by pushing him in front of a speeding race car. Jolene and Cory set out to exonerate Brennan, despite learning that 13 years earlier Brennan was the driver in a car crash that killed his passenger, Gleason’s sister. Meanwhile, Jolene begins to suspect that the car-thief father of her foster son, Danny, might have returned to the Finger Lakes region to reclaim his son. In Bork’s capable hands, Jolene’s struggle to balance her role as a mother to Danny and as a friend to Cory and Brennan only adds charm to this tidy mystery, and Jolene’s no-nonsense narration will draw readers right in. (Dec.)