The Big Dirt Nap, Rosemary Harris, Minotaur Books, $24.95, and Deadly Appraisal, Jane Cleland, St. Martin's Minotaur, $6.99.
I'm going to review the books generationally, with apologies to both authors. Harris is a newcomer to the business—her first book, Pushing Up Daisies, came out last winter, and her character, Paula Holliday, who has given up a cool job in New York City and moved out to the burbs is still on the hip side. She might be in her early 30's, but when she needs a “good” outfit she's actually able to produce a pair of leather pants for the occasion. Paula occasionally becomes upset during the course of the story when various service employees call her “ma'am” or “lady” (all I can say to that is, suck it up sister!) My point here is that she's younger than the average mystery heroine and it makes her pretty refreshing as a main character.
In this novel, Paula has agreed to meet her best friend Lucy at the Titans Hotel for an all expense paid weekend (Lucy still has the cool NYC job) and she's snagged a few bucks from the local paper to writer about the corpse flower the hotel has in the lobby which is about to bloom. The flowers, which are gigantic, only bloom every seven years, and when they do they produce an odor not unlike decaying flesh (hence the name). Paula, waiting for her friend Lucy to arrive, strikes up a short conversation with a man in the hotel bar, one Nick Vigoriti. Shortly after their conversation (with Lucy still nowhere in sight) Nick turns up dead in the dumpster behind the hotel.
While the story and resolution are in the traditional mystery story mode, the threads Harris draw into her plot are not. As in the first book, the sidebar characters are strong ones: the shady hotel owner; the tormented young Russian girl, Oksana; the young woman in charge of the corpse flower (her enthusiasm seems to exceed Paula's); even a cashier at the mini mart (he of the “ma'am” remark); the missing and possibly shady Crawford brothers; and the cranky homicide cop heading up the investigation The rotating and complex cast of villains, as well as the residents of the small town where the Titans hotel is located, all add spice to the story. Lucy's disappearance is of course tied to the central mystery, and Harris' account of Paula finding her lost friend is a real classic.
This is a light, enjoyable, and at the same time thoughtful mystery.
The one person who Josie can trust, her boyfriend Ty, is out of town at the deathbead of his Aunt Trina, and isn't around to tell Josie to snap out of it. That's left to her practical lawyer, Max. The fact that the boyfriend is out of town downplays the romantic aspect present in the first book, and I thought it was an effective way for the author to delve more deeply into Josie's personality. As the murder investigation proceeds it emerges not (as often happens in mysteries) that Josie is the prime suspect, but that she might have been the intended victim. When a car tries to run her down one night that supposition becomes cemented as fact for everyone but Josie, who still desperately wants Maisey and not herself to have been the intended victim.
Along the way Josie's perceptions of her co-workers and friends are challenged and tested as she figures out who she can trust and who she can't. The lesson of this book might be “go with your gut”, but the killer is still unexpected. As it turns out, Josie's perceptions of the killer were completely off base. I also truly enjoy the detail Cleland includes about running her antiques business as well as details of the antiques themselves. There are several objects where the provenance has to be traced and verified, and that was as interesting a mystery to me as anything else in the novel. Josie's practical, generous and intelligent personality win the day, and that makes this series one I'd be happy to revisit.
To browse more reviews, use the navigation links at the top of the page.