Jo-Ann Power Missing Member

Missing Member

Jo-Ann Power

St. Martin's, Sept 2006, $23.95, 320 pp.

ISBN: 0312357990

Congresswoman Carly Wagner of Texas plans to run for a sixth term. Her constituents love the former Miss America runner up and voters like her humor and her ability not to kowtow to the party line. The party is grooming her to run for higher office and plan on making her the key note speaker at the Democratic Convention. She knows how to work the political scene but she never betrays the ethics of Congress or the laws of the land.

One morning when she enters her office she finds the body of Minority Whip Alistair Dunhill with a fatal chest wound and his penis in his mouth. The police consider her as a suspect because she saw Alistair in her office the night before and she has no alibi. Eager to turn suspicion away from her, she starts asking questions. Mr. Jones, a bodyguard and private detective hired to protect her, is driving her crazy with his sexy looks, his refusal to tell her who he works for and his ignorance on who hired him to watch over her. When someone breaks into her house and tries to run her off the road, he gives her black ops gadgets that will help in her protection but even with Jones and his gizmos, she still finds herself on the wrong end of a gun.

Jo-Ann Power, has written a witty charming and realistic who done it that deserves a place on the mystery best-seller lists. The protagonist is both sophisticated and down home, a combo that shouldn't work but does sort of a younger, prettier (obviously) female Sam Ervin. Mr. Jones is a cipher wrapped in an enigma and surrounded by a veil of secrecy that will have male hearts fluttering. Missing Member is an appropriate title on many levels especially with today's Congress.

Harriet Klausner