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DEAD BEAT AND DEADLY
by Margaret Chittenden
Zebra Books, July 1999
320 pages
$5.99
ISBN: 1575663147


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

DB&D is the third in her mystery series featuring orange-haired, line-dancing, bar-owning, divorced, Charlie Plato, an amateur detective with a delightful and interesting group of friends and acquaintances. This one is the best of the three. Chittenden has numerous other novels on the shelves in a different genre, so you can expect good writing, and the author doesn't disappoint. The story is compact, and bounces along at a nice pace. The dialogue is snappy and Charlie is one funny female. Her take on life ranges from the merely amusing to the insightful.

Chittenden's characters are interesting and believable and the plot she's cooked up is clean and demonstrates her understanding of the genre. The book is fast, fun, and the reader will learn a few things in the bargain.

Charlie Plato, co-owner of Chaps, a California country-western club, finds herself up to her pointy-toed boot-tops in murder once again. The genesis of the story is a self-defense class the club sponsors for the female staff of the club and a few close friends. A member of the self-defense group is stabbed to death and the police focus, naturally, on the woman's husband. Charlie and her sometime-television-star partner, Zack, decide the police may be on the wrong track and pursue the case on their own. Of course, they have to two-step around a local homicide detective, a task made more difficult by the emotional involvement between the detective and one of Chaps employees. Chittenden carefully blends emotional responses between the characters in several developing subplots and the principal mystery into a sparkling, fun-filled mystery.

Note: This review is based on the out of print hardcover edition released in August 1998.

Reviewed by Carl Brookins, July 2003

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