The Literate Kitty

It sounded like the perfect getaway to San Francisco native, Detective Katrina Hunter... a couple weeks off work, taking her prized sailboat out for a leisurely trip down the coast to Ensenada, Mexico.  At least, it would’ve been perfect... were it not for the fact that her fiancé--make that, ex -fiancé--was supposed to have been by her side, celebrating their upcoming nuptials. Or that it was actually a forced vacation, given her mandatory leave of absence from the SFPD after shooting her sister’s scary stalker. Yep, aside from those teensy little issues, everything should’ve been peachy. Until, that is, her sun-dazzled, weary eyes go and spy what she swears is a mermaid, floating on a patch of seaweed. On closer inspection, the mermaid (rather disappointingly, if not surprisingly) turns out to be a dead young woman, whom Katy immediately reports to the nearest authorities. Unfortunately for her, though, that means the Mexican authorities... an overworked, underpaid--not to me...

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...