There is an obvious similarity between After All These Years and Isaacs's first novel, Compromising Positions (1978). In both books, the protagonist is a bright Jewish woman whose comfortable suburban life is jarred by murder. And in both, the heroine must face not only danger, but uncomfortable truths about her own life, as she works to solve the mystery.

Rosie Meyers's situation, however, is much grimmer than that of Judith Singer, the heroine of Compromising Positions. After Rosie stumbles over her ex-husband's body on her kitchen floor, she herself becomes the chief suspect.

She eludes a police watch just minutes before arrest and sets out to discover the real killer in order to clear herself.

Rosie's predicament, and her growing desperation as the traps of circumstantial evidence and police apathy close in on her, are hardly accidental.

The economic and social uncertainties of the late 1980s and...