cover image Trunk Show: A Charlotte Sams Mystery

Trunk Show: A Charlotte Sams Mystery

Alison Glen. Simon & Schuster, $19.5 (238pp) ISBN 978-0-671-79115-5

Freelance writer and amateur sleuth Charlotte Sams returns from Showcase to investigate the death of an elephant handler at the Columbus (Ohio) Zoo in this down-to-earth puzzler. Charlotte arrives at the zoo for her scheduled interview with elephant keeper Jerry Brobst, who said he had some information for her upcoming article. But Jerry's been pushed to his death from the roof of the Asian elephant enclosure. As she questions other zoo employees to find out what Brobst planned to tell her, she also is threatened: the top of her convertible is slashed, and she finds a spoken threat inserted onto her music exercise tape. After learning of fiscal impropriety in the new director's background, Charlotte confronts him with her information. Soon, he too is dead, an apparent suicide. As she continues her quest for the killer, Charlotte also contends with her husband's worries for her safety and her own concerns about her teenaged son's activities. Glen gives readers an appealing heroine and an entertaining backstage view of zoo operation in this well-plotted cozy. (Jan.)