Death and the Redheaded Woman: An Auction Block Mystery

Ross’s winning debut, the first in a new cozy series, introduces auctioneer Wren Morgan, a redhead who has the misfortune to encounter a naked dead man at the bottom of the stairs leading to the cupola of the Campbell house, an antebellum Victorian mansion whose contents she is cataloguing. At the East Bledsoe Ferry, Mo., police station, where Wren goes to make a formal statement, she meets Death (pronounced “Deeth”) Bogart, a hunky bounty hunter and newly minted PI. Her remark that Death is one of the middle names of Dorothy Sayers’s fictional detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, immediately catches the attention of the incorrigible Death, who recognizes the dead man from a photo as an ex-con connected to a case he’s working on. Death is happy to join the fetching Wren for some sleuthing. Distinctive characters transcend the usual cozy archetypes, though prudish readers should be prepared for some mild sexual content. [em]Agent: Janet Reid, FinePrint Literary Management. (Feb.) [/em]