Carolyn Hart, Dead Days of Summer

Dead Days of Summer

Carolyn Hart

Morrow, Apr 2006, $23.95, 288 pp.

ISBN: 0060724021

On Broward's Rock, an island off the coast of South Carolina, Max Darling begins a new case, but shockingly fails to return home. His worried spouse, Death on Demand bookstore owner Annie, frantically calls the police. The cops begin a search for the missing sleuth. When they locate his abandoned vehicle, they also find the corpse of a young woman nearby and the murder weapon in the trunk of Max's car.

The media has a field day painting Max as a womanizing cheater who murdered his girlfriend, Vanessa Taylor. Not long afterward the police arrest Max charging him with homicide. Annie knows her spouse is faithful and no killer. She plans to prove both by going undercover, with her only adviser being local mystery author Emma Clyde.

In the award winning Death on Demand series, DEAD DAYS OF SUMMER may be the best novel to date. The storyline focuses on the efforts of Annie and friends trying to do the impossible to prove that Max is not a killer or an adulterer, although the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of his being both. This fine amateur sleuth cozy, with some police procedural elements is filled with heart, as a stunned Annie believes to the max in her beloved spouse.