cover image Dead Woman’s Shoes

Dead Woman’s Shoes

Kaye C. Hill, . . Crme de la Crime, $17.95 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-9551589-9-5

Set on the Suffolk coast, Hill’s droll debut introduces accidental sleuth Alexandra “Lexy” Lomax. After discovering that her flaky husband, Gerard Warwick-Holmes, the star of TV’s Heirlooms in Your Attic , is a crook, Lexy flees London—along with her pet Chihuahua and half a million quid of Gerard’s stolen loot—and takes refuge at Otter’s End, a log cabin in Clopwolde-on-Sea. Lexy soon realizes that Mrs. Glenda Doyle, the cabin’s deceased previous occupant, had been a PI with an ad for “discreet services” still running in the local paper. How hard can it be, wonders Lexy, who’s in need of ready cash (she doesn’t dare touch the stolen money for the moment), to trail a possibly philandering wife or locate a missing cat? It turns out to be very hard, indeed, after the wife is murdered and the cat proves more valuable than the average feline. Crisp prose and a plot laced with animal tomfoolery will keep readers amused and eager for a sequel. (Oct.)