THE ALIBI MAN
Tami Hoag
Bantam
Mystery
ISBN-10: 0553802011
ISBN-13: 9780553802016

Tami Hoag's faithful readers will remember Elena Estes, who played a heroic and tragic role in the 2002 novel DARK HORSE. THE ALIBI MAN marks the return of Estes, one of Hoag's most complicated, difficult and intriguing characters.

THE ALIBI MAN finds Estes retired from the Palm Beach County police force and employed on a horse farm in Wellington, Florida, enjoying the relative solitude and quiet that the job brings as she continues to recuperate from the injuries to her body and soul. Her peace is shattered when she discovers the mauled and murdered body of Irina Markova, another groomer at the farm. While Estes did not know the woman well, she feels an odd kinship toward her and decides that Markova's death shall not go unpunished.

This would be complicated enough, given that Estes no longer has any official standing to interject herself into the matter, but it is made more so by her romantic entanglement with James Landry, who is in charge of the investigation and with whom Estes broke up the evening before Markova's death. However, this does not prevent Estes from tracing Markova's whereabouts in the hours leading up to her brutal murder.

It turns out that Markova was a party girl by night, hobnobbing with the wealthy and enjoying the nightlife of West Palm Beach. Among those she crossed paths with was Bennett Walker, a high roller in the area who has a dark past that intimately involved Estes, and the powerful and dangerous Russian Mafia --- or, more specifically, Alexi Kulak, a violent and psychotic mob chieftain who in his own way loved Markova and will stop at nothing to obtain vengeance for her death.

Estes finds that Walker and Markova appear to have been involved with each other, at least on some level, and that Walker was with Markova on the night of her death. But Walker is part of a wealthy and influential circle of Palm Beach men who call themselves The Alibi Club, providing support for each other when one of their members needs an alibi for a jealous spouse --- or more. As Estes begins to close in on the truth, however, she herself is in danger of becoming the next victim of a killer whose identity she never suspects.

Hoag enhances a tight mystery plot with an over-the-shoulder view of the Palm Beach polo scene, giving her readers an up-close-and-personal look at the rich and famous. It is Hoag's ability to incorporate real-world elements such as this into her novels that has made her work exponentially more popular with each new release --- and THE ALIBI MAN her best work to date.

   --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

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