Patricia Smiley Cover Your Assets

Cover Your Assets

Patricia Smiley

Mysterious, Nov 2005, $23.95

ISBN: 0892960191

In Los Angeles, someone stabs film agent Evan Brice in the dump he rented for "work" gatherings. LAPD visits Tucker Sinclair as a love poem dedicated to the independent business consultant was found at the homicide locale. Tucker explains that she and Evan were college sweethearts until she found her paramour in bed with her best friend Cissy. Evan and Cissy eventually married, but apparently he still felt deeply for Tucker.

Tucker visits her former pal to pay her respects. Cissy insists she did not kill her womanizing spouse though Detective Moses Green believes she is the only viable suspect, Unable to ignore her friend's plea, Tucker agrees to close the Venice Beach dump where the late agent held a rendezvous, but that leads her to following Evan's neighbor while ignoring her business (Sinclair and Associates), her family (mom the drama queen actress, mom's boyfriend and their Westie Muldoon), and warnings from Green's partner detective Joe Deegan, whom she needs as an escort.

The key to this amateur sleuth mystery is the self deprecating heroine who as she advances into one escapade after another keeps asking herself why she is doing this stupid dangerous inquiry. The who-done-it is fun to follow as Tucker gets into trouble while browbeating herself and wondering how to persuade Deegan to accompany her to her sister's wedding. Thus Tucker with a strong eccentric support cast insures that smiling readers will appreciate COVER YOUR ASSETS and seek out Tucker's first business sleuthing adventure FALSE PROFITS.

Harriet Klausner