Good one! ( )

A nice addition to the Benni Harper mystery series. ( )

Gabe's son, Sam, announces that his girlfriend, Bliss Girard, is
pregnant, they are in love, and they intend to be married. Bliss is
part of the very wealthy, very influential Brown family, and a member of
a social class that Benni has very little experience with. When the
Browns throw an engagement party for the young couple, both families
come together at the Seven Sisters Ranch to get to know each other. To
Benni's dismay, Gabe's ex-wife, Lydia, is included and tries to step
into her old role and nudge Benni right out of the picture. And to put
the icing on the cake, one of the members of the Brown family is shot to
death in the middle of the party when no one is looking. Gabe is
pre-occupied with his son and his ex-wife and the murder is outside his
jurisdiction anyway, and before she knows it, Benni is sucked into the
investigation by the new sheriff's deputy, Detective Ford Hudson, a
Texas Good Ol' Boy with a fatal charm. One way or the other, the
outcome of this case is going to change everyone concerned for the rest
of their lives.

This is the best book yet in this series. It's written with a lot more humor than the ones in the past, even though the subject matter is anything but humorous. I am getting to know Benni better and she is starting to flesh out into a multi-faceted real person. But, there was that typical lack of communication between her and Gabe that really gets under my skin. I wanted to reach in and slap some sense into her a couple of times, and I'm frustrated by the fact that the author makes a point of telling us that both Benni and Gabe have cell phones, but neither one of them ever seem to have enough sense to call the other one and let them know what is going on! They keep "missing each other" and playing phone tag on answering machines at home and at the office. Makes me wonder what the blazes they pay a cell phone bill for if they don't intend to ever use them! ( )