Sudden Exposure (Jill Smith Mystery) - Hardcover

Dunlap, Susan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385310250 ISBN 13: 9780385310253

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 1996

Synopsis

From bestselling author Susan Dunlap comes this wry, indecently entertaining mystery involving politics, murder--and nudity.

Where else but in Berkeley, California, could naked protesters, competing health clubs, and ex-sixties radicals add up to murder?  And who else would find herself smack in the middle of this crisis than back-on-the-beat Detective Jill Smith, the beloved protagonist of seven previous Susan Dunlap mysteries?

During a protest of the recent city ordinance against nudity, Jill is called in to put a stop to a slew of naked protesters.  While she's at it, she runs into Bryn Wiley, founder of a local gym, who complains of vandalism, and suspects that the culprit is Sam Johnson, a hostile ex-sixties radical who owns a competing health club.  Jill starts to investigate, but is halted by a much larger crime: Bryn is shot at close range, and a lot of questions need to be answered.  Who shot Bryn and why?  What happened to all the idealists who are dropping their values and selling out?  And how is the irrepressible Jill Smith going to figure it all out?

About this title

About the Author

Susan Dunlap is an award-winning mystery writer. She was employed as a social worker when an Agatha Christie novel inspired her to try her hand at writing mysteries. Six manuscripts and six years later, she published Karma(1981), which began a ten-book series about brash Berkeley cop Jill Smith.
Since then, Dunlap has published more than two dozen novels and several short stories. Her other ongoing characters include Vejay Haskell, Kiernan O'Shaughnessy, and Zen student/stunt double Darcy Lott. Dunlap helped found Sisters in Crime. She lives near San Francisco.

From Kirkus Reviews

In an eighth outing, Jill Smith, the author's Berkeley-based policewoman (Time Expired, 1993, etc.), recently on Homicide detail, goes back to patrol duty when Detective Sergeant Brucker arrives from Sacramento and takes over her job. She's soon fielding complaints from Bryn Wiley, onetime Olympic team diver and owner of a fitness center called The Girls Team. Someone's been shooting out car windows in the driveway of the house in the hills she shares with her look-alike cousin and secretary Ellen Waller. Bryn accuses neighbor Sam Johnson, whose anarchistic leanings go way back. He's now married to Fanny, once another Olympic contender, now crippled. Sam has recently opened the Heat Exchange, in direct competition with The Girls Team. Vandalism escalates to murder when Ellen is found shot to death behind the wheel of Bryn's car. The case is complicated by Ellen's fabricated identity and by a connection to Bryn's other neighbor--Karl Pironnen, a recluse obsessed with dogs and chess. Jill, with crucial help from old friend and adversary Herman Ott, a local p.i., manages to bring the case to a close before Brucker even begins to get a handle on it. The author's affection for Berkeley's past and present eccentrics is clear. Most everything else here is a muddle-- uncompelling motives, contrived plot twists, and Jill's interminable inner musings. Lots of fuss; no fire. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0385310250
• ISBN 13: 9780385310253
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 280