Digging Up Otis
by T. Dawn Richard
Humorous, action-packed addition to the May
List mystery repertoire!
Publisher:
Martin Brown (April 2005)
Death
for Dessert offers an unusual and unexpected sleuth for the
setting who turns the senior citizen residence upside down. The
mysteries carefully unfold, not truly solved to the end. The slightly
twisted humor and sleuth carries the reader through the pages at a
quick clip.
May List's cheating doctor husband has gone one step too far. Although
raised to be proper, she is one senior citizen whose husband is not
going to leave her for some young Bambi and kill her spirit. She dumps
sugar in his gas tank, checks herself into a senior citizen's home and
watch out! She's just getting started. All the residents seem to avoid
the strange Mrs. Berkowitz who lives next to her, but not May List, at
least not until she turns up dead. But wait, what are those crumbs on
he corpse's lips? Weren't those the brownies that she had given Mrs.
Berkowitz to bribe information out of her? May List must prove her
innocence before the corpse is discovered. How can such a proper lady
cause such a ruckus? One hilarious escapade after another ensues.
As a character and sleuth, May List certainly stands apart from Miss
Marple, Jessica Fletcher and other mild senior citizens. Except for
absence of the violence and explicit sex typical of the genre, this
mystery borders on the hard-boiled. The writing style is intentionally
a bit coarse and the sleuth's sees her world with a perspective
dynamically askew from the stereotypical elderly sleuth.
Once or twice the literary jokes fall slightly flat but not often.
Otherwise, the language lay stimulates and amuses, such as when the
author turns "Lord of the Dance" into "Lord Help Us of the Dance" in a
particularly suspenseful crazy predicament. I thoroughly enjoyed this
book and would like to read more by this author. I found this a very
refreshing change from the typical tame mystery.
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