Celebration in Purple Sage

The genre takes some good-natured ribbing from Smith (Dust Devils of the Purple Sage, 1995) when centennial festivities in Purple Sage, Tex., gain unwanted fireworks. Celebration organizer Vera Meece dies, and stand-up sheriff Mac Donnelly is wounded when both are shot at a nearby WWII POW camp that has been converted into a temporary museum. Aspiring mystery writer Jolie Wyatt would let the law take its course--except that the law is temporarily embodied by deputy Ed Presnell, whose stupidity is rivaled only by his pure cussedness. Ed takes Matt, Jolie's husband (well, technically, her ex: they reconciled just as their divorce papers were finalized and have never gotten around to the paperwork of annulling the divorce), in for questioning. Meanwhile, Jolie's sort-of in-laws have swooped into town, bringing (of all people) Cecily, Matt's beautiful, elegant first wife with them. Jolie must find Vera's killer to protect Matt, but her snooping makes her Ed's favorite suspect, and Matt is peeved that she is slighting his parents. But persevere she must. After all, who knows what Nazi with a secret past may lurk in the shadows of Purple Sage? Jolie and her friend Diane Atwood, equipped only with what they're learning in their efforts to become writers, parody those clever-boots sleuths who intuit the solution nobody else suspects and are inevitably right. Except that here, the solution is much simpler than Jolie imagines. (Nov.)