Amazon.com Review
Christmas festivities and family bonding provide the backdrop in this seventh mystery featuring cleaning service owner-operator Callahan Garrity. While Callahan and her mother Edna are busy preparing trifle and a potent Garrity version of eggnog for their annual Christmas bash, Callahan's youngest brother, Brian, appears after a 10-year absence. Edna is thrilled, both with Brian and with the granddaughter he has presented; Callahan is more dubious, particularly when it becomes clear that her brother has been in town for well over a year and that he has taken the 3-year-old Maura without her mother's permission. Callahan, with pressure from Edna, agrees to help Brian fight the custody battle against his ex, but things only get more complicated once the woman is found stabbed to death. Police, not surprisingly, put Brian at the top of their list of likely suspects. After all, if he is willing to commit one felony by kidnapping his daughter, what's to prevent him from murdering her mother?
Despite overtones of O.J.--Brian is also accused of occasionally resorting to violence--there is much to enjoy here: Edna's toilet-training philosophy, Maura's precociousness, and the suburban South's peculiar social dimensions (just what constitutes white trash, anyway?) provide much to chuckle over. Callahan and her band of merry mop-bearers take on the police, Brian's mother-in-law, and even Brian himself to demonstrate his innocence so that he can stay out of jail and secure custody. Callahan is an admirable and entertaining heroine. Kathy Hogan Trocheck has a lighter touch than Sarah Paretsky or Sue Grafton, and Callahan is rarely as unforgivably foolhardy as counterparts V.I. Warshawski or Kinsey Milhone can be. With Callahan and her more charming relations at the novel's heart, Midnight Clear offers jolly holiday reading with both poignant and hilarious moments. --K. Crouch
From Publishers Weekly
Callahan Garrity (Strange Brew, etc.) is the owner of the House Mouse cleaning business in Atlanta and a part-time PI. She lives with her mother, Edna, with whom she runs the business, employing several eccentric assistants. As the story opens, Callahan and Edna are cooking the traditional family treats for their annual staff Christmas party when, after a 10-year absence, Callahan's prodigal brother shows up. Brian is the black sheep of the family, with a long history of booze and recklessness. Now, however, he thinks he's finally taking responsibility with a vengeance: he has kidnapped his three-year-old daughter, Maura, from her unfit and slutty mother. As if fighting with his ex-wife and abducting his child weren't enough drama for his horrified sister and mother, Brian soon asks for their help when he is suspected of murder. In addition to lively characters, Trochek delivers in this seventh Garrity mystery an unusually vivid Atlanta, as she smartly unfurls an engrossing tale of family troubles and family loyalty.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
