Death and the Hubcap

The second in the Trudy Roundtree mystery series, Death and the Hubcap, lives up to the promise of Linda Berry's first book. Trudy becomes more of a distinct character. The mystery is a good one. Trudy's cousin Hen, in keeping with his attitudes about a woman police officer, assigns her to a kooky report of a man run over by a car. The fun is that the man who claims he ran over the victim, Tanner Whitcomb, has an imaginary car that he steers with a hubcap. It turns out that there really was someone run over and it was murder, so Trudy has her second murder case. The book leads to the art world and the fascinating concept of junk sculptures. The sculptures sound so wonderful, you wish you could see them.

I love the town of Ogeechee and the people who live there. The characters do not fall into stereotypes. Berry paints the characters she introduced in the first book with more details in this book. The book in some ways reminds me of Deborah Adams's mysteries and the characters that she wrote about in her small southern town. (Whatever happened to that wonderful series?) The mystery is a good one. I look forward with pleasure to the next book.