British author Hill's smashing sequel to Dead Woman's Shoes
(2008) improves on her well-received debut. Lexy Lomax, the estranged trophy wife of wealthy but shady Gerard Warwicke-Holmes, is still lying low in the Suffolk village of Clopwolde-on-Sea, pretending to be a PI, when 16-year-old Rowana Paterson asks Lexy for help. Rowana fears a black magic ritual she performed to attract money killed her late mum's best friend, Elizabeth Cassall. Elizabeth, who appears to have accidentally fallen out of an upstairs window at her cottage, Four Winds, in nearby Freshing Hill six weeks earlier, has left Rowana £30,000 and the cottage. Lexy and her Chihuahua, Kinky, visit Four Winds, where she decides to stay after learning Gerard is lurking in Clopwolde. Meanwhile, the members of a local family, who want to buy Four Winds, are upset Rowana has inherited the cottage. Hill avoids the usual cozy clichés in this cracking good read. (Mar.)