Midnight Baby: A Maggie Macgowen Mystery

This mystery is a good page-turner about Maggie, a California film-maker who sidelines as a sleuth, especially when she is in the company of her paramour, Mike, an L.A. homicide detective. The book is filled with quick and clever dialogue with lots of fun interactions between Maggie and Mike. The story line revolves around the murder of a 14 year-old hooker names Pisces. Who Pisces is, why she hit the streets, and the motivation for her murder is the backdrop for this mystery, ro- mance and all-around fun read.

From the very first sentence of this fast reading novel, the reader sees everything taking place directly in front of them through independent filmmaker, and single mother, Maggie. She is a passionate narrator, describing events as if she were projecting them directly to the reader through her camera.While on location on a project she encounters a teen prostitute who isn't at all who she seems and has many secrets she is trying to hide on LA's seedy streets. But before Maggie can dig deeper, the girl, simply called Pices, is found dead in the park, her throat slit.Enter Maggie's on-again/off-again lover Det. Mike Flint LAPD, and the story takes off. Sparks fly between the two characters as they try to uncover the mystery of Pices, and try to patch up their own stormy relationship, without getting in over their heads.Wendy Hornsby writes at a fast pace and the book is a fairly simple read. Like ourselves, Maggie interjects bits of herself in the re-telling of shocking events, her concern for her own teenage daughter, her difficult divorce, and her fear of living with and without Mike.Overall, the story loses it's way only once and then it rights itself and finishes beautifully. I only hope that Miss Hornsby keeps the stories coming.