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Jane Wheel is drowning in 'stuff'. Jane, a former ad exec turned antiques and collectible picker, mostly picks for two friends in the antique business; Tim, a gay florist/antique dealer, who is her best friend from first grade, and Miriam, her mentor. Life in the Chicago suburbs provides a never-ending array of garage sales, estate sales, church sales, etc. Jane doesn't try to hit them all but she has her favorites. Unfortunately, Jane is also a pack rat and many of the things she acquires never find their way out of her crowded garage, kitchen or other areas of the home she shares with husband Charley and son Nick. Jane has a further dilemma besides trying to figure out how to grocery shop, prepare an occasional meal and remember to sign her son's permission slips. Tim would like her to be his partner in his antiques enterprise and Bruce Oh, a former police detective turned private eye, has asked her to be his partner in his new agency. Why these two exceedingly neat, tidy and over-organized men want a woman who agonizes over cleaning out her purse, never thinks about clothes or how she looks and can't run her own household as a business partner is a bit of a mystery (to this reader) but that is not the mystery in this book. Detective Oh (Jane can't bring herself to think of him any other way) asks Jane to help his wife, Claire. She has been questioned in the murder of a fellow antique dealer, who accused Claire of selling him a fake Westman Sunflower Chest. The trail leads to Campbell and LaSalle, sort of a new-age yuppie commune/arts center/furniture hospital. They had the suspect piece last before it was delivered to the now deceased dealer. The plot definitely thickens and gets wilder and wackier after they arrive at the rural Michigan retreat. As a former garage sale junkie, I love descriptions of collectibles, junk, furniture, just about anything. The collector in all of us will be amused by this novel, the third in a series of Jane Wheel books. However, as I'm not a fan of amateur sleuths, Jane is just a little too disorganized and unfocused to fit my definition of a detective. However for fans of light, good natured and humorous books, this is definitely one to pick up.
Reviewed by Lorraine Gelly, November 2003
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