Nina Wright Whiskey Straight Up

Whiskey Straight Up

Nina Wright

Midnight Ink, Sept 2006, $12.95, 312 pp.

ISBN 0738708550

Widowed realtor Whiskey is not having a good week in the usually crime free town of Magnet Springs, Michigan. It begins when the man who went to prison for stabbing her late husband is released and asks her for a job as part of his twelve step redemption. Against her better judgment she agrees but when she sees him covered in blood outside an ice shanty on the lake, she begins to regret her decision.

When she enters the hut, she sees the dead body of her nemesis, realtor and mayor Gil Green before he disappears in the water where the ice has cracked. Next, Chester, the eight year old son of a local singing superstar Carina, who Whiskey is watching, disappears and later is believed to be kidnapped. Her dead husband's daughter and their twin babies are living with Whisky and Avery is constantly on her case because the babies' father is in town and wants to see his children for the first time; a situation Whisky supports as she wants to start up a relationship with Nash. When the twins are kidnapped, Whisky personally gets involved in locating them thanks to the willingness of a helicopter pilot.

The tourist town of Magnet Springs is populated with eccentric characters and pets from Whiskey's stealing afghan who is a good tracker to her ex-husband Jeb, a semi-successful singer who makes it clear he wants his former wife back. Two kidnappers, two murders and nothing to link them except some out of towners with no apparent motive make the crimes in the area difficult to solve. Nina Wright writes a colorful and delightful cozy that will have the audience in stitches of laughter.

Harriet Klausner