Scrub-A-Dub-Dead
Barbara Colley
Kensington, January 2007, $22.00
ISBN: 0758207662

In New Orleans, the members of the Red Scarf Sorority are staying at the Garden District's Jazzy Hotel, where the club's president Tessa Morgan is being pressured by her husband Frank to sign the divorce papers. Frank plans to marry his much younger lover Lisa as soon as Tessa puts her John Hancock on the legal document ending their marriage. However, so far Tessa refuses, though Frank has sent emissaries like their daughter Belinda and his secretary Margaret Green.

Not long after Frank's latest failed attempt to disband their marriage, Lisa, who is also at the Jazzy, is found dead with a red scarf wrapped around her neck. New Orleans Homicide Detectives Gavin Brown and Judith Monroe assume Tessa committed the crime as she had motive, means and opportunity. However, Judith's Aunt Charlotte LaRue, owner of Maid-for-a Day domestic cleaning service thinks otherwise, as this seems too simplistic. The housekeeper, who happens to be working the Jazzy as a favor to a friend Carrie Rogers who works there, uncovers other suspects, such as Lisa's stalking former boyfriend, to the chagrin of her loving niece.

The whodunit takes a back seat to the cleansing antics of the heroine and the vivid descriptions of post Katrina and Rita New Orleans. Charlotte is at her best whether she is cleaning, encountering a former beau turned suspect, or just sleuthing. Though the mystery is fun but light, series fans will appreciate the heroine's latest escapades, as she scrubs for clues, not accepting that the president of the Red Scarf Sorority would commit such a dumb crime, even in passion without at least cleaning the crime scene.