Valerie Wolzien, Death at a Premium

Death at a Premium

Valerie Wolzien

Fawcett, Oct 2005, $6.99, 272 pp.

ISBN: 0345468090

Just before Memorial Day, building contractor Josie Pigeon and her fianc lawyer Sam Richardson discuss their Labor Day wedding when she learns that her firm Island Contracting won the bid to renovate Bride's Bed and Breakfast. However, her client also sends his grandson, an undergraduate architectural student Christopher Higgins, to redesign the B&B. Worse than keeping the rookie in line, her associate accidentally hires a man who besides breaking Josie's gender wall is unable to get insurance due to illness.

As the crew works on breaking down a wall, they find a corpse behind the plaster. However, the body turns out to have been a mannequin. Later they find a second dummy under the house. Not long afterward they find a third except this time it is a real corpse. The father and son Rodney "Rats" who make up the sheriff's department assumes that one of the crew killed the victim though their preference is to pin the crime on Josie. Not sitting idly around waiting for the Rats to devour her, Josie investigates beyond just her team though some shaky shenanigans over E-Bay items surface.

DEATH AT A PREMIUM is a fine amateur sleuth starring a strong intelligent and proactive heroine in a Florida barrier island setting. The cozy like story line starts off breezy with wedding plans, unwanted male help, and buried mannequins, but soon turns into a homicide investigation. Josie is at her best saving her business, solving a murder mystery along with a summer cop (female of course), coping with her teenage son and her future mother-in-law and planning a wedding. This is no different than battling Hurricane Agatha as she did in Murder in the Forecast.

Harriet Klausner