There are some suspense-mystery novels that hold you at the edge of your seat, biting your nails, and glued to the pages, even though there is an element inside them that does not make too much sense. Web of Evil is a suspense story belonging to such a category.

In the story, Paul Grayson, who is an NBC news executive, wakes up to find himself bound and stuffed in the trunk of a moving car. He doesn't know how he got there. When the car stops moving, Grayson hears the sound of a train about to pass over him.

At the same time, in Sedona, Ariz., Ali Reynolds a former L.A. TV newscaster travels across the desert to solve two legal problems. The first one is her age discrimination suit against the network that replaced her with a younger person. Her second dilemma is her divorce against Grayson, who preferred April Gaddis, a slim would-be Pilates instructor, over Reynolds. Grayson had intended to marry April after his divorce from Reynolds.

As Ali Reynolds drives through the desert, she passes a wreck in which Grayson had died. Thus, Ali is a widow and she is the one to get Grayson's fortune. Grayson's fiancée April is pregnant but Grayson did not have the time to change his will to make April or her unborn child his beneficiary.

Now that Ali had a financial motive to kill her husband, she soon becomes the prime suspect in his murder. She has three lawyers: one to handle her divorce, another to handle her job termination suit, and the third and most visible one in the story Victor Angeleri, the criminal defense lawyer.

Ali is not the kind to listen to her lawyers and as the body count rises, the police conclude that Ali is guilty of multiple murders. Yet, Ali ignores Angeleri's advice to keep quiet and she visits the crime scenes, accidentally contaminating evidence, implicating herself even more.

Ali is shocked to learn that the police can get her phone records and that the detectives can read her blog on the internet. Her ignorance of police procedure is unbelievably odd; on top of her being a newscaster, Ali was once investigated for having killed a man in self-defense.

The plot runs along with twists and turns but still lets the reader bond with the heroine, even though Ali Reynolds, as the main character, does not seem smart enough for a TV newswoman.

"Web of Evil" is enjoyable, although not the best of the recent mystery novels I have read. The main character is energetic and compelling but a little dense, and her relationship with her conservative mother, who runs a diner in Sedona, is wonderfully written. The dialogue is excellent and the desert, people, and the towns of Arizona are vividly pictured.

The author, Judith Ann (J. A.) Jance is an award-winning author of mystery and horror novels. Before becoming an author, Jance worked as a school librarian on a Native American reservation. She is a graduate of the University of Arizona. She has three series of novels about retired Seattle PD officer J. P. Beaumont, Arizona small-town sheriff Joanna Brady, and Diana Ladd Walker.

The book is 368 pages in hardcover with ISBN-10: 1416537074 and ISBN-13: 978-1416537076.

The author's style of writing keeps the reader reading, despite the main character's unexplainable ignorance of police matters. This is a gripping book of suspense good for entertainment purposes.