A BAD DAY FOR PRETTY

An amateur sleuth finds a corpse almost as fascinating as the sheriff’s blue eyes.

Stella Hardesty’s after-dinner plans for Sheriff Goat Jones are cruelly interrupted by the intrusion of Brandy, the lawman’s not-quite-ex-wife, who screams that she needs protection and a little drink. Back home, Stella checks on Chrissy, her assistant at the sewing-machine repair shop of her late, unlamented husband Ollie. When the phone rings, she’s enmeshed in her unofficial and highly illegal second job: meting out justice to wife abusers. Neb Donovan, bless his gentle heart, isn’t all that bad, though Stella once had to get him off Oxycontin so that his wife Donna could live with him in peace. Now a tornado has relocated the body of a woman that had been interred under the snack shack at the demolition-derby stadium. Neb, presumably the one who’d poured the concrete over the corpse, has wound up in jail, and it’s up to Stella to prove him innocent, or not. Her task involves a lot of sighing over the sheriff’s blue eyes and neat butt and even more attention paid to his almost-ex and her current beau, the dastardly Wil [sic] Vines. All will turn out just fine in time for a rescheduled evening with old blue eyes.

If you like a little mystery with your romance, Stella (A Bad Day for Sorry, 2009) is the gal for you. Readers who prefer crime to cute may want to give her a pass.