A BAD DAY FOR MERCY

The ear looked just like Chip’s even if it wasn’t attached to his head anymore, said Gracellen, and it came attached to a note demanding $30,000 for the return of the rest of him alive.

Naturally Stella can’t refuse her sister’s request to rescue the boy. But when she tracks him down, he and his love, Natalya, a mail-order bride from Russia, are hacking away at her husband’s body and putting the pieces into several garbage bags for disposal in trash containers around town. No, they insist, they didn’t kill him, even if they did want him out of the way so they could marry. Somehow, Benton Parch just arrived dead on their porch, and they felt obligated to get rid of him. And no wonder, since the plastic surgeon trainee the tightwad had paid to do work on Natalya had botched the job royally: Just look at her. The lovers have no idea who might actually have killed him, but they think his former business partner may have had a grievance. Meanwhile, drug dealers are after Natalya’s son Luka for late payments, which they’ve been trying to cover with that ear package and request for money from Gracellen, who supposedly could have gotten funds from Chip’s wealthy grandfather, who even though he didn’t talk to him, probably would have come up with the cash, it being family and all. Complicating matters, a stowaway in Stella’s car looks enough like Luka to be mistaken for him, and Stella’s two suitors, Goat the sheriff and BJ of the mushy kisses, are drawn in to help her out, even though Stella has enough strong-arm skills of her own to subdue wife abusers, a task she’s taken seriously since disposing of her vile husband Ollie.

One MacGuffin after another, with grisly sidelights now and then—exactly what fans have come to expect from hyperactive Littlefield (A Bad Day for Scandal, 2011, etc.).