T. Dawn Richard, A Wrinkle in Crime

A Wrinkle in Crime

T. Dawn Richard

Five Star, Mar 2007, $25.95

ISBN: 1594145346

When sixty-seven-year-old May Bell List reads about the death of Gerty Peach from a heart attack, she has problems accepting that the bouncy woman who ran in a race two weeks ago died from natural causes. She decides she must do something about what the police choose to ignore.

May visits the deceased's two sisters, Inez and Bertha, in the suburb of Harvest as she knows them. They seem gleeful over the death of their haughty, odious sibling, who planned to shut down their business, the Poochie Hooch dog grooming facility. As she continues to dig and drive the small town police over the edge with her arresting innocent people, shooting tires, and hobnobbing with hookers, May finds herself in trouble with a killer who wants the geriatric silent and there is nobody to help her because the cops believe this menace to society is the offspring of Typhoid Mary and Peter of the wolf fame.

The antics that May Bell does make her a menace to society and herself, deserving lock up as she crosses a safety line that endangers others with her shoot-from-the-hip actions. Readers will admire this courageous sexagenarian who feels it is her civil duty to investigate a homicide while everyone else prefers the official position, but would also prefer she did it in someone else's state. May's need to do what she perceives is the right thing is commendable, but her missteps turn this into a lighthearted whodunit that clearly says leave sleuthing to the professionals.

Harriet Klausner