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Showing posts from January 21, 2012

Lipstick Red & Dead- The Caddy in the Lake

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Wise-cracking detectives--from the rank amateurs who somehow stumble into the practice of investigating, to the licensed professionals with their fancy gizmos and snazzy Yellow Pages listings--are a dime a dozen in mystery novels... but a wise-cracking, ex-fashion-model, crop-dusting sleuth? That puts a quirky new spin on the genre, in R.P. Dahlke’s peppy debut, A Dead Red Cadillac . Lalla (short for--or preferable to--Eula May) Baines is reaching a memorable conclusion to her thirty-ninth year. Still limping around, recovering from a recent on-the-job accident-- one which ended spectacularly when she crash-landed her plane in a big field of tomatoes around Modesto, California --while dealing with all the usual problems such as difficult employees and an irascible boss (who happens to be her dad), and still smarting from her second divorce (from another of the two-timing losers she seems to gravitate toward), the former-model-cum-crop-duster is primarily concerned with avoiding the t