Zach tells Cass he needs to talk to Xandra in person before he agrees to accept responsibility for Bryce. He decides to go to Xandra's apartment to discuss the matter. Since he is drunk, Cass insists on driving him there, though she agrees to wait for him outside in the car.

A half hour passes and just as Cass begins to worry Zach returns, quite shaken. He has discovered Xandra, dead. Zach tells Cass he made a call to the police, reporting the murder, but declined to give his name because he was afraid he would soon be arrested for the crime.

Cass and Zach must investigate Xandra's death in order to prove Zach's innocence. Cass is concerned about the half hour Zach spent in Xandra's apartment. If he didn't kill her, why was he there so long?

Wanton's Web is the fourth in the Cassidy McCabe series. A problem exists for series writers. How much background information must be given about the main characters? Clearly, the author cannot assume all readers have read the previous entries, yet too much repetition is boring for loyal fans. In this series, the author assumes all readers are loyal fans.

Characters appear, such as Cassidy's mother and grandmother, with no introduction, leaving the reader feeling they haven't been reading carefully enough and should recognize their names. The same dilemma exists when referring to unresolved problems from previous books. Cassidy is worried about an anticipated letter from her professional organization. The reader new to the series hasn't a clue what relevance this letter has, but presumably loyal fans will catch on.

The resident cat plays a prominent role in this book. Unfortunately, except for perhaps allowing the author to demonstrate Bryce's ability to have some feeling toward others, the cat is extraneous to the plot. Every so often, several pages are devoted to Cass and/or Zach interacting with the cat, but these interludes do nothing to advance the plot, and really aren't amusing enough to be thought of as comic relief.

The plot is pretty standard fare. A former lover of the hero is killed, and, naturally, the hero is in a position where he is the most likely suspect. The heroine doesn't want to believe her lover is the murderer, yet evidence keeps appearing that points to him. Such a situation does not necessarily make a dull book, but, in this case, that is exactly what happens. It doesn't help that there is too much extraneous information, which bogs down the action.

I know little more now about Cass and Zach than I did before I read Wanton's Web. I had trouble keeping the minor characters straight when they were first introduced because they weren't initially identified. The characters didn't seem to have much personality so it was difficult to develop any feeling toward any of them, either positive or negative.

Not having read the previous three books in the series lessened my understanding of the characters and their relationship to each other. But Wanton's Web wasn't entertaining enough to make me want to run out and read them either.

--Andy Plonka