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DEATH TIDIES UP
by Barbara Colley
Kensington, January 2004
288 pages
$6.50
ISBN: 1575668769


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

DEATH TIDIES UP is the second in this New Orleans-based series featuring Charlotte LaRue, owner and chief employee of Maid-for-a-Day, a cleaning business.

One of Charlotte's main clients is Marian Herbert, a slightly unstable widow with two young sons. Marian's husband Bill died in suspicious circumstances but nonetheless ones that allowed Marian to collect his life insurance and keep their real estate firm going. Charlotte has the cleaning contract for one of Marian's properties, the Devilier apartments.

Charlotte makes a preliminary inspection of the apartments and discovers that someone's been squatting in one of them. She hastens out of there and returns the next day with her cleaning team. They make a lot of noise so that any intruder can sneak out. Unfortunately when they find the intruder he's in no condition to move or do anything ever again. Even more unexpectedly the dead man is the Herberts' ex-business partner, Drew Bergeron, who died two years ago.

Charlotte amasses information and gossip through her network of employers, her police officer niece and her soon-to-be-retiring policeman tenant. She digs into the history between Marian, Bill, Drew Bergeron and his wife Katherine who knew each other since school days before going into business together. Also she keeps her eye on Sam Roberts, Marian's over-friendly odd job man. In addition Charlotte is anxiously approaching her 60th birthday and is worrying about her health, believing herself to be increasingly forgetful.

I really enjoyed the first book in this series, MAID FOR MURDER but I wasn't so struck with this one. It was good but not a 'wow' book. It's a fairly intriguing mystery which runs alongside Charlotte's family life, her possible romance and health concerns. Charlotte deduces the murderer but there's no flashy ending and no twists but at least she doesn't put herself in danger this time. I do get a good sense of place from the descriptions of the Garden District, all the lovely houses and the hot and steamy weather.

Reviewed by Karen Meek, May 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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