Dig

When sixty-eight-year-old newspaper librarian Maddy Sprowls discovers that her old college friend, archaelogist Gordon Sweet, has been found murdered at the abandoned landfill that is the site of his latest dig, she sets out to uncover the truth about the killing, which may be linked to the bludgeoning death of state wrestling champion David Delarosa a half century earlier.

When an old college friend is murdered, shot in the head at a landfill, 68-year-old librarian Maddy Sprowls is willing to work overtime to help the police discover the culprit in Corwin's winning second cozy to feature the head of the Hannawa (Ohio) Herald-Union's "morgue" (after 2003's Morgue Mama: The Cross Kisses Back). Digging in the newspaper's files, Maddy uncovers a decades-old unsolved murder that took place during her student days and wonders if the two crimes could be connected. A game old bird battling loneliness and the prospect of retirement, she has a tendency to digress about local landmarks and such trivia as how to make her favorite sandwich. But once Maddy starts to put the pieces of the puzzle together, the plot picks up and builds to an exciting and fitting conclusion.
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Maddy Sprowls, otherwise known (but never within hearing distance) as Morgue Mama, gets a shock when she settles in at her desk at the Hannawa Herald-Union one Monday morning. She reads the obituary of an old friend. Gordon Sweet, an archaeology professor, was shot through the head. Determined to find out who killed her friend, Maddy, the head librarian at the Herald-Union, stumbles on evidence that Sweet's murder might be connected to another murder that happened half a century ago. The third Maddy Sprowls mystery is, like the previous two, solidly plotted. But it's not the story that keeps us going; it's Maddy herself, a charming, curmudgeonly 68-year-old who is less Miss Marple and more television's Lou Grant (adjusted for age and gender differences). If future Morgue Mama adventures are as fun as this one, the series could be in for a long run. David Pitt
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