Madeline "Mac" Maclin
Created by Jane Tesh

Evidently not all private eyes are surly ex-cops. Some are former beauty queens.

MADELINE "MAC" MACLIN was once Miss Parkland of Parkland, North Carolina but now she's traded in her tiara for a fedora. Yep, she's now a fledgling private eye with a messy marriage behind her and a potentially hot romance with eccentric hunk (and would-be flim flam man) Jerry Fairweather looming on the horizon in this romantic cozy series that strives for comparisons to Stephanie Plum but too often seems to have more in common with Honey West.

The well-rendered small-town southern setting, the goofball characters and good-natured frothy humour should charm cozy lovers, and the overly busy plots and scatterbrained logic of them may grate on those looking for something with a little more substance.

Still, the series is just so darn eager to please that it should at least be Miss Congeniality.

NOVELS

• A Case of Imagination (2006)...Buy this book
• A Hard Bargain (2007)...Buy this book
• A Little Learning (2008)...Buy this book

Report respectfully filed by Kevin Burton Smith.