"Wilde police procedural romance"

Sistene "Sissy" Green shoots her boyfriend wannabe singer Rockerfeller Hughes in the toe. Aunt Trish gets her niece Allegheny Green to take charge. Before she can Parker County Sheriff Samuel Conahegg arrives as the neighbors, Reverend and Mrs. Swigley called the cops. The ambulance takes Rockerfeller to the hospital while Sam takes the Green siblings downtown to question them. Sam and Ally are attracted to one another, but duty comes first. He flushes the marijuana he found down the toilet so possession charge do not occur and insists there is no law for shooting a rat. He frees both siblings, but warns Ally about her sister being involved with drug traffickers and worse. Before they leave a thug beats up Sissie insisting she tell her boyfriend he owes big bucks and will be next.

However, though the siblings find Rockerfeller kissing his wife in the hospital that is not the end. Murder follows and soon Ally though innocent as the "enabler" to her loony family becomes involved in sexual blackmail, drugs, loan sharking, and threats to her well being with only Sam to keep her safe even as she wonders who will protect her from her raging hormones whenever he shows up as her protector.

This Wilde police procedural romance never slows down from the first moment that Sissy and Sam meet until the final confrontation with the killer. The zany story line contains an eccentric (that is kind) secondary cast while Allegheny as her family's enabler will remind the audience of Marilyn in the Munster. The who-done-it is well written, but it is the antics of the Green kin that force the sheriff to "save" the besieged Ally (for himself that is) that make for a fun read.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted August 21, 2005