Murder Talks Turkey (The Yooper Mysteries)
In her third Yooper mystery (as in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, or U.P.), Baker’s lively protagonist, Gertie Johnson, is minding her own business, standing in line at the bank when it gets robbed. From her position on the floor, Gertie watches as a gunman on the roof of a nearby building shoots the bank robber dead. She quickly decides that she and the other two members of her Trouble Buster Investigative Company (all single women of a certain age) need to help their hapless sheriff solve the case. The trouble is feisty Gertie has a lot on her plate, what with her extended family, her other investigations, and a tentative new romance. The deeper into the bank robbery she goes, the more complicated and seriously dangerous it gets as, one by one, her fellow Trouble Busters fall to the wayside, and she is alone with the killer. Intrepid Gertie is a wonderfully drawn character, whose view of the U.P.’s denizens and their surroundings makes for enjoyable storytelling. --Maria Hatton