This is the fifth and most recent of the Lola Wicks mystery series and my favorite so far. Lola, grieving to the point of breakdown, flees an intervention to take a journalism assignment about international adoptions focusing on Mormon families living in Salt Lake City.

Although it’s supposed to be a fluff piece to help Lola find her stride, as soon as she arrives in Salt Lake she finds the star of her story has killed his next door neighbor, the mother of his fiancé.

It quickly becomes about drugs, homosexuality, and the iron-fist of the tenets of the Church of Latter Day Saints, as well as Vietnam’s somewhat doubtful orphanage adoptions.

I like the main character, Lola Wicks. She’s plucky, resourceful and human.

My credulity, however, was stretched by a hurried trip to Vietnam that she made to gather information which fell almost instantly into her lap one she was there.

Still, I intend to keep reading local author Gwen Florio’s work – especially as they become more nuanced as her career progresses. ( )