Sixty in Sarasota

SIXTY IN SARASOTA is not only an engrossing whodunit, but it's also a laugh riot. The crime itself, the castration of a seventeen foot tall statue (is that statutory rape?), is performed hilariously in the first chapter. But the reader doesn't learn the motive of the assailant or his identity until the final pages. P. I. Kathy King, a young sleuth in her thirties, treks all over Florida's beautiful Sun Coast pursuing leads. Her parents have their own problems--two of their neighbors are sabotaging each other's lawns, destroying sprinkler systems, and shorting out pool pumps. Just how these two plots are related gradually becomes clear-- but not before a dachshund mounts an armadillo, a homeless man puts on a minstrel show, a Led Zeppelin song is used to ward off feral hogs, mayhem is committed in a Publix grocery store, and a pot-bellied pig bites a man in the buttocks. Sarasota, considered a retirement utopia, will never be the same.