Swamp Spook
by Jana DeLeon
This is another entry in the Miss Fortune series. The
first half didn’t hold my attention very well, though it was funny enough to
keep me reading.
They are somewhat formulaic, like so many series, but
things did get pretty complicated in the second half, making it more
interesting. The best thing about these books is the ridiculous situations that
Fortune, Gertie, and Ida Belle get into.
Fortune Redding is a former CIA assassin. She’s hiding
out in Sinful, Louisiana because an agency leak put a price on her head. At
this point in the series, the whole town knows who she is and she has decided
to start a P.I. agency, with help from her friends Ida Belle and Gertie, who
were military spies in Vietnam decades ago.
Fortune is also dating the local Deputy, Carter
LeBlanc.
The book starts with Fortune being cast as the
chainsaw murderer in the local Halloween hay maze. The only problem? While they
are on break, someone puts a real dead body in the maze, with its head cut off.
The corpse turns out to be a local prominent business
man. Was he murdered? Maybe, maybe not. So how did he end up in the maze, and
why? There’s a young wife, a financially burned business partner, and even a
butler.
With the town busybody, Celia Arceneaux, breathing down her neck, Fortune
doesn’t need this kind of trouble. Celia knows just who to complain to and soon
the state police are in town, making Carter’s life miserable and investigating
Fortune.
Whether Gertie is accidentally crawling through poison
ivy then swelling up or the threesome are setting a treadmill on fire, it’s the
absurdity that keeps this book moving along and the reader laughing.
I would definitely recommend these mysteries to anyone
who likes a comedic mystery.
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