APRIL FOOL DEAD

Having plastered teensy Broward Rock, South Carolina, with flyers announcing local super-author Emma Clyde’s upcoming book signing at Death on Demand, proprietor Annie Darling is extremely agitated when someone cribs her style and issues similar-looking flyers that accuse locals of hit-and-run driving, adultery, the wrongful incarceration of wife-killer Jud Hamilton, the inappropriately accidental verdict assigned to Emma’s second husband’s drowning, and the fatal mishap of a tipsy heiress aboard a yacht. Swinging into full amateur detective mode, Annie and her husband Max, stalwart of the newly opened Confidential Commissions, scour the island in search of the mysterious flyer-writer. Max’s wacky mom Laurel, on the trail of drug-runners, is shot at and goes to ground; a teacher who lives near where Laurel was sniped at is shot and killed; and a beautiful, worried student, who recently dumped her boyfriend for the lure of an older man, is found drowned in unfriendly waters. Still, the Darlings, their friend Henny, and mystery writer Clyde continue to play detective—interrogating, prying, entrapping, alternately aiding and impeding the local coppers. But not to worry: it all comes out fine, if you discount a few murders, in time for Emma Clyde to hold forth at a packed book signing.

Silly, illogical, and increasingly mannered. But devotees of the Death on Demand series (Sugar Plum Dead, 2000, etc.) will probably adore the mystery quizzes, the suggested reading titles, and the serene hubris that lets amateurs believe they can outsolve the pros.