From Publishers Weekly
The third appearance of Callahan Garrity, the quondam PI and owner of the House Mouse cleaning service who was last seen in Every Crooked Nanny , is a page-turner. When her cousin Patti McNair is shot to death in her new Lexus near the Garden Homes project in Atlanta, Callahan refuses to believe it was a senseless murder resulting from a random robbery. Learning that things may have been amiss in Patti's marriage to successful, secretive attorney Bruce, Callahan employs her clue-ferreting skills to stay ahead of the official investigation. She tracks an allegedly wayward priest, Bruce's Dixie mob clients and a crack-dealing gang leader before figuring out the identities of the bad guys and barely escaping with her life from a confrontation in a cemetery. While Trocheck captures more of the geography than the texture of Atlanta and seems to limit African American characters to the roles of domestics, gang lords and project-dwellers, Callahan, still dealing with breast cancer and living with longtime lover Mac, remains a gutsy '90s heroine. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
When Patti McNair is senselessly blown away in an Atlanta carjacking with her young son asleep on the back seat, her cousin Callahan Garrity suspects that it may not have been a random act. Callahan is a part-time PI, a former Atlanta cop, and the full-time owner of the House Mouse cleaning service, catering to wealthy Atlanta suburbanites. She sweeps into action, tapping all of her best contacts, despite her family's insistence that she leave widower Bruce and his children alone. There are just too many unanswered questions. Why has Patti's sister moved in with Bruce and the kids? Why has Bruce split with his law partner to team up with a clutch of seedy comedy-club owners? Callahan threads her way through project gangs, a tax-starved public infrastructure, and her obstreperous and wacky family to nail the murderer. In Callahan, Trocheck (To Live and Die in Dixie, LJ 7/93) has given us another worthy member of the lady PI genre. Recommended for general collections.Susan Clifford, Hughes Aircraft Co. Lib., Los AngelesCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Her cousin Patti McNair's killing seems to shock Callahan Garrity, the PI who doubles as head of the cleaning service House Mouse, out of the saccharine coyness of her debut (Every Crooked Nanny, 1992); even the county homicide cop who's helping out tells her, ``You're a hardheaded bitch, Garrity.'' Well, she needs to be, because the cops are treating Patti's death as a routine drive-by shooting; they don't care that she was killed in a part of Atlanta she never drove to, or that her nine-year-old son, Dylan, who was in the car with her, would be a promising witness if only they could get past his hysteria and his long-standing speech impairment. But Callahan, ignoring her family's howls of protest, tries to question Dylan herself, and when Patti's lawyer husband, Bruce, gets an injunction pulling her off Dylan, she decides that he had Patti killed for the insurance and the chance to shack up with the woman over whom Patti had briefly spoken of divorcing him. But then how does Father Mart Covington, rumored to have wanted to leave the priesthood over Patti, fit into the picture? Despite some uncomfortably lighthearted interludes with the House Mouse staff, Callahan shows a much stronger range and presence in this unmystifying mystery. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Book Description

With a nose for crime and grime, Callahan Garrity has handled dirty killers on the streets as an Atlanta cop and on the job as a house cleaner. But she's always been able to keep her private life neatly separated from work -- until her cousin, Patti, is found dead. Exchanging her House Mouse cleaning uniform for a detective's cap, Callahan is hellbent to find the culprit. It's notthat she doesn't trust the Atlanta PD. She just knows that her suburbanite cousin's death is too strange to be accidental.

Callahan's search takes her on a convoluted trail from Patti's priest, who may have provided more than spiritual counsel, through Atlanta's inner city and into the shady deals of her cousin's newly prosperous husband. Yet, as the pieces start to fall into place, Callahan faces an even bigger challenge -- staying alive.

About the Author
Kathy Hogan Trocheck has written seven previous Callahan Garrity mysteries, including Midnight Clear and Strange Brew. A former reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she lives in Georgia with her husband and two children.

ANNOTATION

With the news of her cousin's murder, Callahan Garrity shakes off her House Mouse cleaning uniform to don her detective's cap. It's not that she doesn't have faith in the Atlanta police; she used to be one of them. It's just that the crime seems too incongruous with Patti's suburban life to be an accident.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In her third outing, Callahan Garrity, Atlanta's wry, earthy cleaning lady cum sleuth, turns her own family - and a ruthless murderer - against her when she insists on investigating the carjacking death of her favorite cousin. Usually Callahan's nosy mother, Edna, who helps her run the House Mouse cleaning service, loves nothing better than kibbitzing her cases. But when Callahan's beloved cousin, Patti McNair, the prototypical suburban homemaker, is killed during a carjacking in an Atlanta ghetto, Edna and the rest of the family are incensed that Callahan insists on keeping the wounds open by probing for explanations of a death that seems as inexlicable as it is tragic. Callahan couldn't pick a less promising case to be stubborn about, either. The only lead comes from Patti's learning-disabled son, Dylan, who vaguely remembers his mother's attacker as a black man wearing a hat. With the help of the outrageous band of "girls" in her employ, Callahan learns that Patti and her husband, Bruce, a high-living lawyer, had anything but the idyllic home life that everyone, their relatives included, thought they did. Patti may have been getting more than just priestly counsel from her confidant, the charming Father Mart. Bruce is keeping secrets, too - shady new business associates and an affair that doesn't seem to be as far in the past as he insists it is. When Callahan has a chilling encounter with a trigger-happy gang leader, she realizes not only that she can find Patti's murderer but that she'd better do it fast, before she joins Patti in the family plot. While Callahan strives to solve the case and stay alive, we're treated to a splendidly evoked backdrop of the New South, where antebellum and postmodern collide. As always, though, Callahan herself is center stage - homespun yet street-smart, equally adept among Atlanta's country club set and its stone-cold inner-city gangsters. Callahan's at her forthright, feisty best in Kathy Trocheck's most ambitious, trencha

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

The third appearance of Callahan Garrity, the quondam PI and owner of the House Mouse cleaning service who was last seen in Every Crooked Nanny , is a page-turner. When her cousin Patti McNair is shot to death in her new Lexus near the Garden Homes project in Atlanta, Callahan refuses to believe it was a senseless murder resulting from a random robbery. Learning that things may have been amiss in Patti's marriage to successful, secretive attorney Bruce, Callahan employs her clue-ferreting skills to stay ahead of the official investigation. She tracks an allegedly wayward priest, Bruce's Dixie mob clients and a crack-dealing gang leader before figuring out the identities of the bad guys and barely escaping with her life from a confrontation in a cemetery. While Trocheck captures more of the geography than the texture of Atlanta and seems to limit African American characters to the roles of domestics, gang lords and project-dwellers, Callahan, still dealing with breast cancer and living with longtime lover Mac, remains a gutsy '90s heroine. (July)

Library Journal