Homemade Sin - Hardcover

Trocheck-kathy-hogan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747214433 ISBN 13: 9780747214434

Publisher: Headline Book Publishing, London UK, 1995

Synopsis

In her third outing, Callahan Garrity, Atlanta's wry, earthy cleaning lady cum sleuth, turns her own family - and a ruthless murderer - against her when she insists on investigating the carjacking death of her favorite cousin. Usually Callahan's nosy mother, Edna, who helps her run the House Mouse cleaning service, loves nothing better than kibbitzing her cases. But when Callahan's beloved cousin, Patti McNair, the prototypical suburban homemaker, is killed during a carjacking in an Atlanta ghetto, Edna and the rest of the family are incensed that Callahan insists on keeping the wounds open by probing for explanations of a death that seems as inexlicable as it is tragic. Callahan couldn't pick a less promising case to be stubborn about, either. The only lead comes from Patti's learning-disabled son, Dylan, who vaguely remembers his mother's attacker as a black man wearing a hat. With the help of the outrageous band of "girls" in her employ, Callahan learns that Patti and her husband, Bruce, a high-living lawyer, had anything but the idyllic home life that everyone, their relatives included, thought they did. Patti may have been getting more than just priestly counsel from her confidant, the charming Father Mart. Bruce is keeping secrets, too - shady new business associates and an affair that doesn't seem to be as far in the past as he insists it is. When Callahan has a chilling encounter with a trigger-happy gang leader, she realizes not only that she can find Patti's murderer but that she'd better do it fast, before she joins Patti in the family plot. While Callahan strives to solve the case and stay alive, we're treated to a splendidly evoked backdrop of the New South, whereantebellum and postmodern collide. As always, though, Callahan herself is center stage - homespun yet street-smart, equally adept among Atlanta's country club set and its stone-cold inner-city gangsters. Callahan's at her forthright, feisty best in Kathy Trocheck's most ambitious, trencha

About this title

About the Author:

Kathy Hogan Trocheck is the author of ten critically acclaimed mysteries, including the Callahan Garrity mystery series. A former reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, she is also the author of Little Bitty Lies and the Edgar®- and Macavity-nominated Savannah Blues, under the name Mary Kay Andrews.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Her cousin Patti McNair's killing seems to shock Callahan Garrity, the PI who doubles as head of the cleaning service House Mouse, out of the saccharine coyness of her debut (Every Crooked Nanny, 1992); even the county homicide cop who's helping out tells her, ``You're a hardheaded bitch, Garrity.'' Well, she needs to be, because the cops are treating Patti's death as a routine drive-by shooting; they don't care that she was killed in a part of Atlanta she never drove to, or that her nine-year-old son, Dylan, who was in the car with her, would be a promising witness if only they could get past his hysteria and his long-standing speech impairment. But Callahan, ignoring her family's howls of protest, tries to question Dylan herself, and when Patti's lawyer husband, Bruce, gets an injunction pulling her off Dylan, she decides that he had Patti killed for the insurance and the chance to shack up with the woman over whom Patti had briefly spoken of divorcing him. But then how does Father Mart Covington, rumored to have wanted to leave the priesthood over Patti, fit into the picture? Despite some uncomfortably lighthearted interludes with the House Mouse staff, Callahan shows a much stronger range and presence in this unmystifying mystery. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Headline Book Publishing, London UK
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0747214433
• ISBN 13: 9780747214434
• Binding: Hardcover