C.R. Corwin Dig

Dig

C.R. Corwin

Poisoned Pen, Nov 2005, $24.95, 252 pp.

ISBN: 1590582039

Sixty-nine years old Maddy Sprowls, the head librarian for the past three plus decades at the Hannawa Herald-Union is stunned with today's obituary column. A friend from her days at Hemphill College, Gordon "Sweet Gordon" Sweet died. She learns from another section of the paper that someone shot Gordon in the back of the head.

Maddy talks to the crime reporter, who explains a homicide occurred but no weapon was found near the Wooster Pile Landfill where the archeologist Professor was sifting through the garbage. Though warned off by Detective Scotty Grant, Maddy cannot let it go. She sees a connection to her bohemian days when she and the deceased garbologist were members of the Meriwether Square Baked Beans Extravaganza Society and the death over five decades ago of another student.

Maddy applies her years of digging out facts as "Madame Morgue" to the investigation into the death of her college friend over the objections of the lead homicide detective and her paper's crime reporter; each fears for her life. The feisty Maddy makes for a fine time for amateur sleuth fans though her background digging for information for reporters (albeit reluctantly at best and not without making her customers pay with a pound of flesh) makes her more experienced in following leads and threads than most rookie detectives. Fans will want to join Maddy on her DIG for the truth, which is closer to her than she realizes.

Harriet Klausner