Twisted Reason, Author: Fanning, Diane, Pages 224, Price $28.95, Jan 2011, ISBN 978-0-7278-6945-6
Edgar-finalist Fanning skillfully illuminates the heartbreaking challenges facing Alzheimer’s victims and their families in her fourth mystery featuring Virginia homicide detective Lucinda Pierce (after 2010’s Mistaken Identity). When Vicki Humphries discovers the body of her father-in-law, Dr. Edgar Humphries, an Alzheimer’s patient who’s been missing from his son’s house for five months, on the front porch, Edgar’s pockets are curiously full of acorns. Edgar proves to have died from a heart attack, but soon two more missing dementia sufferers turn up dead, possibly murdered: Adele Kendleshon, by drowning, and Francis Delong, by head trauma. Other Alzheimer’s patients have also disappeared in the area. Lucinda’s investigation leads to a strange place that resembles “a poor man’s Disneyland.” Series fans will be pleased to find that Lucinda is recovering well from injuries sustained in an earlier case, and that her relationship with FBI Special Agent in Charge Jake Lovett is flourishing.