Thirty-three and a Half Shenanigans

Ornery Gal

A light chick-lit mystery, Thirty-three and a Half Shenanigans by Denise Grover Swank is for the vocabulary-challenged young reader, who has made the Rose Gardner series bestsellers.

It is set in a small Arkansas town, where people use phrases like “Oh my stars and garters” or “Crappy doodles”, are always placing their hands on their hips and giving each other ‘ornery’ looks (the writer could do with a thesaurus). Here, Rose runs a landscaping business with the troubleshooting Bruce Wayne and her malevolent sister Violet, but also gets involved in many “shenanigans.”

For one, she is in the midst of a love triangle between the deputy sheriff Joe and the assistant district attorney, Mason. Then, her best friend Neely Kate wants help to find her missing cousin, Dolly Parton (they have names like that!)  Rose gets sudden visions of the future, and this, for some reason makes her invaluable to the town’s underworld king Skeeter Malcolm.

In the search for Dolly, Rose and Neely Kate audition at a strip joint, Rose attends a gangsters meeting in disguise, Mason gets shot at, and Joe’s clingy ex girlfriend gets pregnant. Rose has plenty to be “ornery” about.

It’s a quick read, that can be tossed aside and forgotten. Rose is not half as efficient or likeable as so many other female solvers of mysteries, but Swank’s readers probably like a feisty young woman, who is pretty, has a drool-worthy figure and has men eating out of her hands.  And, she doesn’t swoon at the first sign of trouble...or a dead body with a hole in his head.

Thirty-three and a Half Shenanigans

by Denise Grover Swank

Self-Published

Pages: 358