Betrayed begins with Judy Carrier in a funk. Judy is an associate attorney at the all women’s law firm of Rosato and Associates. Her boss, Benedetta Rosato, has dumped a large number of cases on Judy. Judy doesn’t feel good about these new cases, but doesn’t feel she has any say in the matter. Judy worries that her relationship with her best friend, Mary DiNunzio, may become awkward because Mary recently made partner. She is in a relationship with a guy who seems fantastic, but Judy wonders if it is going to go anywhere. Yes, Judy feels out of sorts and she is questioning herself, her career, and her future. We’ve seen these characters before, in earlier books. The lives and personal dramas continue in this volume in the comfortable style that fans will enjoy.
You know that old saying, “things could be worse.” Well, they get worse for Judy. Her relationship with her mother, always tenuous, devolves into constant bickering and everything Judy knows about herself is turned upside down when she learns that her Aunt Barb has cancer. Meanwhile, her aunt’s best friend Iris, an undocumented worker who has been helping her aunt with her gardening, turns up dead. Her aunt wants to know what happened to Iris. Judy puts her work on hold to help her aunt, which makes her job situation even rockier.
I consumed the audiobook version of Betrayed and the reader did a good job with this well paced story. It did seem to me as if the setup for the mystery was a bit forced. Also, Judy, who is very likable, spends a good chunk of the time whining, which seemed out of character. Despite those shortcomings, I found Betrayed to be a fun read that would be perfect for the beach or, as in my case, to listen to while walking the dog. I don’t suppose it gives anything away to say that things keep getting worse, but then Judy solves the mystery and turns things around. An alternate title could have been “How Judy Got Her Grove Back.”