Seeks fame, finds trouble

ANTIQUES AND MYSTERY ARE   A WINNING COMBINATION HERE

By Diane Makovsky

For The Free Lance-Star

THE EIGHTH of Sharon Fiffer’s Jane Wheel mystery series, “Lucky Stuff,” delivers the same easy entertainment her regular readers enjoy.

Jane is a private investigator who also enjoys working with her friend Tim as an antiques picker/dealer.  But Jane’s life is in turmoil; recently divorced  and with her son away at school, Jane has decided to pack up all her treasured belongings and sell her house in Evanston, Ill.

When it sells in just one day, she’s forced to quickly find a new direction for herself.  She temporarily moves back home with her parents, who operate the EZ Way Inn in Kankakee.

Jane soon finds that Kankakee has been taken over by “Lucky” fever, in the person of Lucky Miller.  With banners, film crews and personal appearances happening all over town, Lucky has billed himself as a returning celebrity, a native son who has come back under a new name to film his own comic celebrity roast.

What people don’t know  is that Lucky has  returned to Kankakee with hopes of regaining repressed memories; he suspects he’s harboring  a dark secret, a feeling compounded by anonymous messages and mysterious events. When his luck starts to run out, Lucky hires Jane as an undercover private investigator while filling in as his personal assistant.

Author Sharon Fiffer succeeds in entertaining readers with this  light mystery. It won’t challenge one’s view of the universe, but it  offers a bit of fun.

Diane Makovsky is a freelance reviewer in Spotsylvania County.

LUCKY STUFF

By Sharon Fiffer

(Minotaur, $24.99, 320 pp.)

Permalink: http://news.fredericksburg.com/books/2012/11/05/seeks-fame-finds-trouble/