Seeing is Deceiving — Suzanne North

Seeing is Deceiving is Suzanne North's second Phoebe Fairfax mystery, and it more than delivers on the promise of the first. The sardonic Phoebe and Candi Sinclair, her apparently ditzy colleague at the TV program “A Day in the Lifestyle,” are back, this time in New Age territory.

Phoebe and Candi are filming at the Okotoks Psychic Fair when one of the exhibitors, the sleazy Jonathan Webster, collapses. A few hours later he is dead �" poisoned (in a rather extreme way) �" and the police immediately suspect his common-law wife, Tracy, of murder. The fractured bones and bruises Webster has dealt her over the years give her ample motive. Frightened, Tracy turns to her old friend Candi for help, and Candi is off sleuthing to clear Tracy's name, dragging Phoebe along reluctantly in her wake.

Phoebe's filmmaking efforts and her unenthusiastic crusade to prove Tracy's innocence take her into the fantastic world of fortune-tellers and pet channellers, to the race track, and through the foothills to the icy Sheep River. En route she encounters an ensemble of odd and delightful characters, including Maud Gellman, who's suing the Queen for a wrong done to her in a past life, Two Bob, a retired but not retiring bookie, and Sadie Nightingale, wilderness gardener and card-reader extraordinaire.

Fast-pased, wickedly funny, and with a twisty ending that will make readers cheer, this second Phoebe Fairfax mystery demonstrates that, sometimes, seeing really is deceiving.