Heart Trouble: A Callahan Garrity Mystery - Hardcover

Trocheck, Kathy Hogan

3.91

3,548 ratings by Goodreads

9780060176389: Heart Trouble: A Callahan Garrity Mystery

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060176385 ISBN 13: 9780060176389

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1996

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Atlanta is temporarily distracted from its pre-Olympic frenzy by the sensational case of Whitney Dobbs, the wealthy, white ex-wife of a prominent cardiologist, who ran over a little black girl while driving drunkenly through a park. With the aid of a wily lawyer, she has managed to get off with a misdemeanor charge plus a few hours of community service, and the city is outraged. So when Whitney is shot to death while picking up roadside trash (as part of her community service), people seem happy to accept the cops' verdict that she's just another casualty of a neighborhood where the chief hobby is indiscriminate shooting. Callahan had been doing some detective work on Whitney's spectacularly messy divorce before the shooting and now she's been hired by Whitney's daughter to track down the killer. Callahan uncovers suspects from every social stratum: the parents of the girl Whitney killed, Whitney's greedy ex-husband, and his fluffily malevolent new gal pal. Only a crazy man witnessed Whitney's murder and he communicates solely via biblical riddles and allegorical paintings.
As she races to uncover the killer before she herself gets killed, Callahan's riotous personal life rattles along at full throttle. Her hated sister and brother-in-law move in while their house is being renovated (for renting out during the Olympics), her irascible mom, Edna, suffers some (literal) heart trouble of her own, and the rogues' gallery of "girls" in her employ offer a wealth of comic relief - from unusual table settings to impotent emus.

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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:

Everybody in Atlanta hates Whitney Albright Dobbs, the well- connected society matron who downed a brace of Tanquerays at her club, ran down eight-year-old Faneeta Mayes, and then got off with a fine and a hundred hours of community service (the highway trash patrol) thanks to a bleeding-heart lawyer who blamed everybody except his client. But even Whitney Dobbs deserves a fair shake now that she's not so well-connected anymore; her cardiologist husband Carson Dobbs, long separated from her and cloven to her replacement, has taken advantage of her legal troubles to squirrel away his assets and file for divorce. So when Whitney asks Callahan Garrity, p.i.-cum-house cleaner (Happy Never After, 1995, etc.), to go on a treasure hunt for her ex's family jewels, Callahan reluctantly takes the case. Her plan to insinuate her ailing but indomitable mother into Dr. Dobbs's practice as a patient and to mobilize her staff at The House Mouse to spy on the good doctor is just bearing its first fruits when Whitney and another member of the highway cleaning patrol are shotgunned and stuffed into the roadside trash. Was the killer the heart-specialist husband, one of Faneeta Mayes's distraught parents, or just one of the dozens of picketers who'd been calling for Whitney's blood up till the day of her death? Callahan's fifth is conscientiously plotted, if the waves upon waves of witnesses don't wear out your patience. (Regional author tour) -- Copyright �1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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