Bad Company

I've read both of the Mustang Sally mysteries this week and it just kills me that I'll have wait a year for the next one to be published. I think that, like Nevada Barr, Virginia Swift is headed for the bestseller lists.The characters, the setting, and the plot are all complex and interesting yet witty and romantic. It's often said that mystery readers are usually smart people, but it's still a pleasure to read a book that is both completely entertaining and beautifully written. Enjoy!

Academic/feminist/singer/sleuth Sally Alder and her companion Hawk Green become involved in two mysteries, one involving a nasty murder and the other involving a questionable land swap. The setting is Laramie, Wyoming, during the crowded, raucous Jubilee Days.Compared with her first novel, "Brown-eyed Girl," the writing here is more compact. Where "Brown-eyed Girl" was replete with two-page digressions, in "Bad Company" Swift is more apt to toss of a one-liner.Still, I would recommend reading "Brown-eyed Girl" before "Bad Company." You get a fuller background of the characters, particularly Hawk, who was more richly drawn in the first book. He's rather uninteresting here. In fact, there are points in "Bad Company" where Alder seems to be more intrigued by Scotty Atkins, a detective who is assigned to the murder. The New York Times accurately describes Swift's writing as a comedy of manners. The plot is merely a scaffolding on which to hang Swift's many observations about the variety of the human species. To enjoy the novel, you have to be amused by incidents such as a nerdy academic slinging post-modernism in a Western saloon.

It is Jubilee Days in Laramie, Wyoming and the town is filling up with tourists, cowboys and parties interested in the upcoming rodeo circuits. University of Wyoming history professor Sally Adler and her life partner geology professor Hawk Green want a respite from the crowds so they go hiking in the hills where they find the body of Manette, a cashier at the local supermarket. She was beaten, raped and shot to death and with the town so crowded with revelers, the sheriff isn't sure if he can solve the case before the Jubilee days come to a close. To complicate matters, twenty one year old Manette was a woman on the prowl, looking for somebody to fill up her night and she wasn't very particular about who it was as long it was male. Sally, a curious mix of sixties liberalism and new millennium pragmatism wants the killer caught and sets out to investigating on her own, making a target of herself along the way. Readers who like a raunchy, realistically drawn down home heroine will adore the star of BAD COMPANY. The story line moves faster than a running river, taking readers on a ride that is filled with thrills, chills and action. Virginia Swift is a relative newcomer to the mystery genre but with a novel and series like this, she has a bright future ahead of her.Harriet Klausner