Wash and Wear
By Bill Stackhouse

     Award winning playwright Bill Stackhouse has become a topnotch mystery writer with the Ed McAvoy series. In the fourth installment, Wash and Wear, Ed is sure that the mob is involved when Homer Duncan, a bank teller and owner of a small print shop, is killed by a known hit-man, who is then killed by Heather Larrabee, a Peekamoose Heights Police Officer. The failing print shop had recently acquired a silent partner and the money to replace the aged equipment and pay for Homer's mother's outrageous medical bills.

    Ed turns up counterfeit money that Homer had been printing, and now it appears that Homer had something else that the mob wanted. Heather's house and car are searched, as well as Homer's aunt's house. Heather is targeted by a killer in an attempted revenge, and then grave robbers dig up Homer's mother and a man who was buried the same day. Ed realizes just how serious the mob is about finding their property, and it's a race to prove their involvement before anyone else is killed.

    Stackhouse has a deft touch with characterization. Ed McAvoy isn't the glitzy, super-hero that we find in most of today's suspense stories. These characters are more like people you know, quirky, but easy to relate to. The suspense builds, chapter-by-chapter, in an unrelenting, fast paced journey to the climax. The ending will bushwhack your imagination and send you looking for more by this author.

      By the way, The Plough and Whistle English-style pub from the McAvoy series serves some wonderful-sounding food, and Stackhouse will mail you a recipe each month that you visit his website and sign the guest book. (I want to try that Caramel Walnut Torte and the Bittersweet Chocolate Walnut Torte.)

Bill Stackhouse, Mystery Writer & Playwright, Author of the Ed McAvoy Mystery Series