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When a rash of pranks on the city's meter maids turns deadly, Jill Smith isn't amused
Two witnesses see the man drag the old woman into a canyon while brandishing a rifle. As night falls, detective Jill Smith and the Berkeley police department set up a perimeter. The canyon is a hostage negotiator's nightmare—dark, rough, and full of escape routes—and when she finally opens communication, the gunman doesn't respond. Rather than wait for dawn, Jill leads her team into the darkness. At the bottom of the canyon they find a battered old mannequin and a box of stolen parking tickets. The entire incident was another skirmish in one man's ongoing war to humiliate the city's meter maids.
Interviewing the residents on the canyon's lip, Jill meets Madeleine Riordan, retired attorney and legendary firebrand She seems to know something, but refuses to tell until the next day. When Jill returns, the woman has been murdered, and Jill suspects that the prankster may have lost his sense of humor.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author's personal collection.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Realistic scenes of police life from routine paperwork to by-the-book standoffs with criminals sustain this straightforward mystery, sixth in Dunlap's ( Death and Taxes ) Jill Smith series. After reports of a kidnapping, a hostage negotiation team led by homicide policewoman Smith surrounds a Berkeley, Calif., canyon. They discover the victim is only a blow-up doll, and, finding stolen parking tickets nearby, surmise the perp is the same prankster who's been preying on local meter maids (hence the title). Angry and embarrassed, Smith visits a nursing home on the canyon's rim in the hope that one of the residents glimpsed the practical joker. There, she meets lawyer Madeleine Riordan, once the bane of the police force but now dying of cancer. Believing that Riordan knows something about the meter maid incidents, Smith agrees to return the following night. When she does, Riordan is dead, asphyxiated with a pillow. While the crimes against meter maids continue, Smith trails Riordan's killer. Although this is no spine-tingler, a steady buildup of credible clues and Dunlap's psychological insights move her story steadily forward. Mystery Guild selection.
