Ivy Malone and Mac MacPherson have been circling the idea of marriage for some time (see the five books in the Ivy Malone Mysteries series), and now they’ve made the Big Decision. They’re getting married! Except there is the problem of that dead body—and a killer who’s willing to bring their plans to a screeching halt.
Ivy Malone and Mac MacPherson have been circling the idea of marriage for some time (see the five books in the Ivy Malone Mysteries series), and now they’ve made the Big Decision. They’re getting married! Except there is the problem of that dead body—and a killer who’s willing to bring their plans to a screeching halt.
What follows a wedding? A honeymoon, of course. The beginning of a happily-ever-after future in which Ivy and Mac will travel the country in their motorhome searching for the perfect place to settle down and live. No more dead bodies. No more murders. Instead, here they are on a detour to an old dinosaur park, and Ivy is up to her possum-gray hair in ghost goats, deteriorating dinosaurs, and… what else? A dead body, of course. Ivy and Mac vow non-involvement, no searching for clues or killers this time, but it’s a vow difficult to maintain when they seem to be at the top of the list of suspects. There’s a gun with Mac’s initials scratched into it, a hint of dastardly doings in the past, an exploding Porsche, and a covert climb over a chain link fence into the dinosaur’s domain. Is Ivy in danger from the dinosaurs? Or is it more a case of watch out, dinosaurs—here comes Ivy!
Ivy and Mac are on the road, headed for their long-delayed honeymoon. Baja! Beaches! Romance and shrimp tacos and sunshine! But then comes a panicky phone call from good friend Magnolia, who is, as usual, looking into her complicated family genealogy. What she’s found this time is not another fourth-cousin-three-times-removed, but a dead body in the middle of a desert town. Except that this body, unlike the dead bodies with which Ivy has had past experience, has vanished. Magnolia is uncertain if she made a foolish mistake about there ever being a body, or if something sinister is going on. Sinister as in murder. Mac and Ivy figure a brief side trip to Prosperity, Arizona, to help their old friend won’t take long, but when they arrive they find complications. In addition to the missing body, there’s an old cowboy trying to revive a faded western-movie career, a possible blackmailing, and a two-million-dollar insurance policy. Also an ex-model writing the Great American Novel, her artist boyfriend, gloomy about his surprising success as a painter of desert roadrunners, and a hungry roadrunner named Harry. And somewhere in the desert scene, there’s also a killer, now determined to put Ivy and Mac into the category of the missing dead.
