Curly Smoke: An Anneke Haagen Mystery

Curly Smoke is the second in Susan Holtzer's Anneke Haagen series of cozies/police procedurals. The protagonist is a middle-aged computer consultant in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who faces the uncertain alternatives of personal independence versus a developing relationship with Karl Genesko, a homicide lieutentant in the Ann Arbor police. Prior to the opening of Curly Smoke, her house burned, so Anneke has rented a tiny cottage in a small neighborhood downtown. First, an elderly woman in a neighboring Victorian house dies, apparently of natural causes; then, following a massive snowstorm and a neighborhood party in the snow, an architecture student living in a student rental is murdered. The motive for James Kennally's murder is not clear--he had been a vocal leader in the Ann Arbor gay rights coalition, and he had been involved in the fight to preserve the neighborhood from development. Tension is raised when an unsuccessful attempt is made to burn Anneke's cottage and when the first death is identified as a probable murder. Discovering the motive is essential to discovering the murderer. The plot is very much dependent on specific weather conditions, and Ms. Holtzer does an excellent job of integrating setting with plot structure. The mixture of housing and people types in older neighborhoods in college towns is realistic, adding to the verisimilitude of the novel. The ending is somewhat a surprise, but the clues to both motive and murderer are provided fairly. This series is interesting because its heroine is a mature woman. Ms. Holtzer does not give Anneke great deeds of daring but makes cooperation with the police an integral part of the plot. The characters in Curly Smoke are slightly less developed than in Something to Kill For, and Karl Genesko is too good to be true, but these are small caveats. This mystery is well worth the time.

This series by Holtzer is a great collection of mystery reading...I read them a little out of order, so you may want to start with the first one (I think this is the second one), but they are great no matter what order you read them in!