Vendetta's Victim (Cassidy McCabe Mystery/Alex Matthews) - Hardcover

Alex Matthews is a clinical social worker who enjoys writing psychological mysteries but has no urge to live one. She lives with her husband and private-practice partner in "Oak Park, Illinois, the liveliest little village in America."

Matthews, who considers many female protagonists insufficiently female, set out to create an amateur sleuth possessing the strengths and insecurities of Everywoman.

One winter night, Chicago therapist Cassidy McCabe gets a call from a distraught woman, referred to her by one Cliff Connors. Then another Connors referral calls, and Cassidy learns that this shadow man has injected HIV-positive blood into at least two women. Cassidy can't persuade the victims to go to the police, so she and her boyfriend, reporter Zach Moran, pursue Connors themselves. Although the premise of a therapist investigating a heinous crime without the police strains credibility, this third Cassidy McCabe novel offers a devilish mystery, realistic Chicago ambience, and crisp pacing. By book's end, Matthews has deftly touched upon almost every modern urban fear: AIDS, organized crime, drive-by shootings, stalkers. The book's Chicago background will appeal to fans of Sara Paretsky and Robert Campbell's Jimmy Flannery series, although Cassidy is a less hard boiled heroine than V. I. Warshawski. John Rowen