Desert Cat (Partners in Crime)

Rating:
Summary: silly mystery set in small-town Arizona....
Review: Garrison Allen, who wrote at least one mystery under the name Gary Amo, starts off the "Big Mike" series with a very silly mystery. Penelope Warren, former Marine and current bookstore owner comes home one night to find the "First Lady of Empty Creek" dead, stabbed with a knife with a penny glued to the handle. Then, we meet all sorts of eccentrics in Empty Creek, and we see how ridicilous parts of this story are. Seems the villian likes to wear George Bush masks. Allen stoops to self-promoting as he uses another one of his books as a plot device to help find something crucial. I can only hope the subsequent books aren't like this.