Maggie Pill Mysteries

 Cat lovers hate to admit it, but there are cats who are just plain mean. I submit they have reasons for it, some of which we can figure out, some we can't.  My daughter adopted a cat in Bahrain that was a perfect example of meanness. Like Professor Higgins in Pygmalion, he hated everyone. The reason, she was told, was that he'd been kept in a box for the first few years of his life, and probably mistreated as well.  He was beautiful, much like the cat in the photo above, though he was a gray. My daughter was good to him, and he learned after a few months that he could move around the house (He spent a long time hiding in a closet.) and trust her not to abuse him. This led the cat (Taz, short for Tasmanian Devil) to bond with her AND HER ALONE. The rest of us were fair game. If we walked along the upstairs hallway, he was liable to be lurking, and he'd jump out and slice our ankles bloody. If we came too close, he hissed and growled like a movie monster. And we knew never...

  Cat lovers love their cats, but sometimes we have to admit that they aren't all Einsteins. A relative adopted a stray who came to her door, a beautiful short-haired gray. It soon became obvious that he was either developmentally disabled or had had a traumatic head injury. The unkind would say that he was dumb, like Lorilee's Special Ed. The cat, which she called Dickie, could not learn and did not have an apparent thought process. He existed in the Now, and the Now was hungry and unhappy with where he was. If he was inside, Dickie wanted to be out. If he was outside, he wailed to come in, only to turn around and sit by the door, asking to go out again. Dickie liked his food cheap and smelly, and any time his hostess entered the kitchen, he became convinced he was starving. He'd go in and out between her feet until she gave him something--or pretended to. He'd follow her to the food dish, watch her mime dropping something into it, and look eagerly into the bowl when s...

  The third Trailer Park Tale, THIRD CRIME'S THE CHARM, has taken its first baby step.  This time the folks at Beautiful Bird RV Park have to deal with (you guessed it) three crimes, the most serious one the disappearance of the local detective they've come to know a little. People don't just come to the park and vanish, but that's what Detective O'Connor apparently did. Of course the intrepid couples who solved the other crimes can't ignore this one, and as they investigate, they find two other suspicious situations. Once I have a manuscript sorta-kinda ready for someone else to read, I send it to what I think of as my First Editor. She's an intelligent reader who knows me well, and she reads through the (slightly rough) story to give me ideas about how things are going thus far. I respond to whatever comments she has, and I find that by the time she's had the book for a few weeks, I've got a few ideas of my own. (Nothing improves a writers view of ...

  The second Trailer Park Tale is available for pre-order everywhere I can manage it. So far I only have an Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08HJHQ7D5 . I'll add the links to B&N, Kobo, etc. when they're available. This one continues the adventures of four couples in a Florida Over-55 RV park and, as advertised in the title, there are two crime threads. First, Ron & Julie are asked to see if they can pin down which man living at the park might be the guy who murdered two people back in 1967. While they're working on that, rumors circulate that someone's peeping in trailer windows at night. Of course there are humorous interactions between characters: husbands and wives, neighbor to neighbor, and senior citizens against the world. Shopping for lingerie, getting a confused old man to his doctor's appointment, and dealing with a guy who believes aliens run the government are everyday occurrences for the residents of the Beautiful Bird Over 55 RV Park.  ...

Well, it isn't technically available yet, but any day now the audio version of ONCE UPON A TRAILER PARK will be buyable. My helpful elves at Cerny American Studios in Chicago hurried to get the audio done in time for Christmas, but the process slowed down at Audible.com. I'm still hoping people have a few Amazon & Audible gift cards to use up, so they'll find out all about the murder at Beautiful Bird RV Park in Florida. The book launch party was held in the park where Hubby and I winter. Some very good friends handled the arrangements, and attendance went way beyond my expectations (though I did learn from my first few book launches to order more books than I think I can possibly sell). Since the party I've heard good things about the book, and quite a few people came by to pick up copies as Christmas gifts. The funniest part is everyone trying to figure out who's who in the book. "When I finish it," one guy told me when we passed his place o...

 Buy on Amazon Once Upon a Trailer Park is the first of the Trailer Park Tales, mysteries set in an over-55 RV park in Florida. Much of the humor comes from couples who bump against each other in the smaller, closer atmosphere of a trailer. (Can a marriage survive five months with only one bathroom? Can every single thing a person does be of interest to their neighbors?) The mystery begins with the murder of a visitor to the park, and soon gossip and rumors fly. Everyone speculates on the identity of the killer, but there isn't much agreement. When one of their own is a suspect, the investigation turns serious. Soon after that, it turns deadly for one resident of Florida's Beautiful Bird RV Park. Available now as a pre-order in e-book form. On Nov. 15, 2019, the book will be available in print from Ingram (for bookstores & libraries) and Amazon. E-books will be available at all major retailers: B&N, Kobo, Apple, Overdrive, etc.) NOTE for Florida Book Groups an...