DEAD DANCING WOMEN

A would-be mystery writer, searching for ideas, finds a whopper in her trash bin.

Who says there’s nothing to do five miles outside Leetsville, Mich.? Emily Kincaid has a busy autumn morning planned: outsassing the crows, outsmarting the bears, corralling the beaver who’s damming up her lake and working out the kinks in her mystery plot. But first she has to retrieve her trash can, which turns out to have a severed head inside of it. It belongs to one of the four Women of the Moon, little old ladies who cavort like superannuated Girl Scouts in the woods, singing, dancing and carousing. Then a severed arm lands on Emily’s porch. Could things get worse? Well, yes. Emily’s ex, the philandering Jackson, visits with his newest conquest, long-limbed Jennifer. Deputy Dolly Wakowski steps in to agitate Emily’s life further by calling on her detective skills. When two more Women of the Moon die, one by strangulation and the other by arson, Dolly and Emily first suspect the pastor of the Church of the Contented Flock, then a married pair of survivalists, then the grown-up children of the deceased and finally Emily’s skunk-skinning backwoods neighbor. They become targets but extricate themselves from murder so that Emily can return to her mystery writing.

Every woman who’s ever struggled with saying no, fitting in and balancing independence against loneliness will adore first-timer Emily—not to mention the eccentrics congregating at EATS restaurant and the cutest puppy in the genre.