The Big Dirt Nap: A Dirty Business Mystery (Dirty Business Mysteries)

by: Rosemary Harris

Published by: Minotaur Books

Reviewed by Andrea Sisco

The name of Rosemary Harris’ new book, The Big Dirt Nap, caught my attention first. It’s a great name and made me laugh. Then I cracked open the book spine and began reading and suddenly found that it was well past midnight and I had to get up early in the morning. But it was well worth the yawns I experienced the next day.

Paula Holliday left the corporate world to open her own business (as a master gardener and designer). She’s excited to join her friend and former colleague, Lucy Cavanaugh, on an all-expense-paid trip to the fading old Titans Hotel in Connecticut. Paula thinks ahead and scores an article on the trip for the Springfield Bulletin. The focus of the article is the “titan arum,” a.k.a., the corpse flower which is displayed under glass in the hotel lobby.

Lucy doesn’t show up at the hotel and that leaves Paula conversing with “bad boy” Nick Vigoriti at the hotel bar. Later Nick turns up dead (found by a homeless man) and Paula is questioned by the police as they found her business card on his body.

When really bad things begin happening, Paula believes she’d better find out what is going on before she takes “the big dirt nap.”

Rosemary Harris writes a rollicking good murder mystery with biker gangs, thugs, and a corpse flower with a smell as bad as murder. I am also putting her Pushing Up Daisies on my list of must reads. Oh, and I’ll be waiting for Harris’ next book. She makes murder an awful lot of fun.

Armchair Interviews says: A must read.

Author’s Web site: http://www.RosemaryHarris.com