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Anastasia Pollock thinks her life can't get much worse. Her husband Karl is dead. She had to pay to have his body shipped back to New Jersey from Las Vegas where he'd died after losing every penny they had. Savings, retirement, college funds - everything. She hasn't told their two boys the part about the money yet. Her mother-in-law, a card-carrying Communist, is living with them, probably permanently. Her job has moved from a nice commute via mass transit to a hellish commute in a junker car (see money issues above). Some guy named Ricardo keeps calling her, wanting the fifty thousand dollars he says Karl owes him; Ricardo doesn't believe Anastasia doesn't have the money. Then Marlys Vandenburg, the fashion editor of American Woman, the women's magazine where Anastasia works, is found murdered in Anastasia's cubicle. Someone knocked her out and then sealed her mouth and nose with Anastasia's hot-glue gun. The Cartier diamonds are gone. The police think Anastasia is as good a suspect as any, especially after they find out about Ricardo. Then Anastasia's mother shows up to visit. Flora Sudberry Periwinkle Ramirez Scoffield Goldberg O'Keefe had just buried husband number five. She and Lucille Pollock do not get along, and that's a major understatement. Neither do Catherine the Great and Manifesto, Flora's cat and Lucille's dog. Ralph, Anastasia's parrot, stays above the fray and quotes Shakespeare in an uncannily pertinent way. Anastasia has decided to rent out the apartment above her garage; it used to be her studio but she needs the money. Her tenant is drop-dead gorgeous, incredibly accommodating, and her kids love him. One good thing in her life, maybe. Anastasia decides she has to find out who killed Marlys, if only to keep from being arrested for her murder. Her co-workers are happy to help her; they didn't like Marlys much and they do seem to like her. The police want her to trap Ricardo when she hands over the 50K; she's not all that excited about being the bait, but really doesn't know how to tell them she won't do it. It's all chaotic and crazy. Winston captures the life of a distraught woman very well. Anastasia can't think straight, doesn't always make good decisions - and who can blame her, given her life right now? The humor can be a little broad (the cops are named Batswin and Robbins, for example). Her inability to make either Flora or Lucille behave like adults is annoying, and yet believable. What doesn't work as well is Anastasia's total blindness about her husband and his gambling problem; yet who doesn't know a wife that's been blindsided by something like that? The plot works. Winston sets the stage for a possible romance, leaving the reader something to look forward to in the next book. § P.J. Coldren lives in northern lower Michigan where she reads and reviews widely across the mystery genre when she isn't working in her local hospital pharmacy.
Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, March 2011
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