The White Magic Five and Dime

Starred review from May 26, 2014
Cozy readers with a taste for humor will welcome this hilarious series debut from Edgar finalist Hockensmith (Holmes on the Range) and Falco (A Mother’s Promise). Alanis McLachlan has literally no fond memories of her con-woman mother, Barbra, and has not spoken with her for decades. So it’s a double shock when Alanis learns that Barbra was murdered in Berdache, Ariz.—and that her will leaves everything to Alanis, including a shop called the White Magic Five & Dime. Curious, she travels from Chicago to the small town, where she’s intrigued by her mother’s latest scheme to separate fools from their money—a tarot card-reading operation. The search for the identity of the person who strangled Barbra elicits threats to Alanis herself, who also finds time to get sweet on a local lawman. Readers will eagerly await the next installment. Josh Getzler, Hannigan Salky Getzler Agency.

May 1, 2014
Alanis McLachlan is shocked to discover that her murdered mother, from whom Alanis had been estranged for 20 years, has left her daughter, of all things, a tarot shop in Berdache, Arizona. Why would she do such a thing, knowing that Alanis would see tarot reading as just another con in her mother's long history of scams. Could the shop have something to do with why she was murdered? Intrigued in spite of herself, Alanis goes to Arizona and finds even more unanswered questions, chief among them, Who is the suspicious teenage girl who was living with Alanis' mother? Filled with humor, this engaging mystery turns many staples of the amateur-sleuth story on their heads, with each chapter bringing new quirks and surprisesAlanis even finds herself drawn to the tarot cards and discovers an ability to use her readings to help people. Hockensmith, author of the award-winning Big Red/Old Red series, and coauthor Falco deliver a charming comic mystery, which one hopes is the beginning of a series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

June 15, 2014
A telemarketer hikes out to the Arizona hinterlands to claim an unlikely inheritance from an even more unlikely mother.Alanis McLachlan was never exactly close to her mother. Maybe, as a series of interspersed flashbacks suggests, it's because Athena Passalis, or whatever her name really was, was a con artist who lived on the edge. Maybe it's because she involved her daughter in her scams from the cradle. Maybe it's because when Alanis reached a certain tender age, Athena showed some interest in pimping her out. Whatever the reason, the two haven't spoken for 20 years, and Alanis is amazed to learn that her mother retired to little Berdache, set up shop as a tarot reader and held forth at the White Magic Five & Dime for years before an interrupted burglar killed her and passed the establishment to Athena's daughter. Despite the assurances of dishy detective Josh Logan, however, Alanis is far from certain that her mother really was killed by a burglar. She prods Logan to give her a list of three people who'd filed complaints against Athena. Not only do all three complaints seem to represent legitimate grievances-an endangered marriage, some haunted jewelry Athena appropriated, a doddering fiance she beguiled-but Alanis wonders if they're just the tip of the iceberg. With everyone in town apparently running a scam of their own, it's hard for Alanis to spot the killer. Readers with half an eye open shouldn't be fooled.Hockensmith (World's Greatest Sleuth, 2011, etc.) and Falco provide their tough-cookie heroine with such an appealing line of patter that it's no surprise when Logan asks her, "Are you nuts or do you just not give a crap?"

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