Baby Daddy Mystery by Daisy Pettles – a #BookReview

Title: Baby Daddy Mystery: Shady Hoosier Detective Agency (Book 2)

Genre: Cozy Mystery, Women Sleuths

Publisher: Hot Pants Press LLC

Publication Date: December 8, 2018

Print Length: 216 pages

ASIN: B07KV79P7M

Source: Publisher and NetGalley

Title and Cover: Baby Daddy Mystery – Fun cozy mystery cover

Book Blurb:

It’s spring in Pawpaw County, Indiana, and everybody has a bad case of hanky-panky pants. Senior sleuths Ruby Jane Waskom (RJ) and Veenie Goens are on the run, chasing down cheating heart jezebels and shaking child support out of deadbeat daddies. After Avonelle Apple’s husband, William, the esteemed town dentist, passes away, she receives a child support letter from a self-proclaimed mistress. Suspicious, she hires the Shady Hoosier Detective Agency, to determine if her late husband was a philandering baby daddy. The case seems simple until Avonelle’s son, Bromley, heir to his father’s dental empire, and well-known King of the Pawpaw County Hanky-Panky Pants Club, pops up dead in a scarecrow costume. The mounting romantic mysteries come to a surprise head as the senior sleuths outrun shotgun showers to close in on the answers at the Moon Glo Motor Lodge, the Original Home of Hillbilly Hanky Panky. Veenie and RJ have to buy an extra case of Bengay and a buttload of BBs just to keep up with the romantic misadventures in this humorous crime classic.

My Review:

Whoa, s’cuse me? I definitely fell into the hog wallow and came up sputtering this time. Was NOT prepared for the dialogue or the snarky sexual term of phrase in this “senior sleuth” cozy mystery. Move over, Betty White! This is Book 2 of the Shady Hoosier Detective Agency series and judging by the reviews published before me, very well received. Oh my stars–twas almost bound to give me the vapors!

Down in the back hill country of Pawpaw County, Indiana, it’s spring and apparently everyone has had enough of the cold weather and can’t wait to get out and do some of that birds and bees thing. Ruby Jane Waskom, better known as RJ, and Lavinia Goens, Veenie, are busy again chasing down low-down, cheating sidewinders and deadbeat daddies when Avonelle Apple asks the pair to find out if, indeed, she has relatives heretofore unannounced. The owner of the agency with whom they work has skedaddled out of town before the husband of the sweet thing he’s been playing with can catch him and they are temporarily on their own.

But it must be “that” time of year, as then RJ’s daughter suspicions her insurance hubby is getting in some jolly’s on the side, Avonelle’s sons are two chips off the block, and their broader is throwing some Sassy twists to the well-plotted, multi-leveled mystery.

I must admit, never in all my born days have I run across SOOO many euphemisms for male equipment, barely veiled but ribald humor poked (use of the term advisedly) at so much sexual innuendo. Okay, better this, I guess, than some of the more common language these days–cleaner–but no less surprising, much less in a cozy aimed at senior women.

There was a plot device you would probably recognize, the use of many landmark names you might also recognize. No problem with the book functioning as a standalone, these gals are more than well-fleshed where you’d prefer just not knowing any more. I loved the l960 Impala; those land yachts were definitely unique. The dialogue appears to have brought out a number of LOL’s in previous readers (while I was doing some serious eye-rolling) and no doubt this would tickle a great many readers into appreciating an unusual cozy offering.

I received the ebook download from the publisher and NetGalley and greatly appreciated the opportunity to read and review.

Rosepoint Publishing:  Three-point Five of Five Stars

The Author: Daisy Pettles is the pen name of Vicky Phillips, born in Bedford, Indiana and raised in the tiny farming community of Medora. As a child, she was fed a steady diet of books, pies, and Bible stories. She currently lives in a cloud of peace and quiet at the end of a dirt road in Vermont. The Shady Hoosier Detective Agency, humorous novels set in Knobby Waters, Indiana, is her debut cozy mystery series.

©2019 V Williams