Meet Mrs. Mildew
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Amateur detective Mrs. Mildred Mildew is the star of Molly McKinney’s mystery series comprising both short stories and a novel. Mildew’s cases take the reader to a variety of international venues, reflecting the author’s travel experiences. Oddball characters, engaging plots and whimsical humor are the only predictable elements in Mrs. Mildew Mysteries.
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Mrs. Mildew in one of her fabled undercover disguises.
Note SpyCam in left lens of sunglasses.
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Pursuing a professional investigator’s license, Mildew does surveillance work on call for fellow retiree and former police detective Victor Van Mutter, owner of Ace Investigations in Tucson, Arizona. The two met playing in a seniors tennis tournament and maintain a friendly state of one-upmanship on and off the courts.
Mildew is sixtyish, petite, and her fashion sense ranges from vintage to outrageous. Her undercover arsenal includes a stable of wigs, gaudy eyeglass frames, a stun gun, and business cards to suit any occasion. Opinionated and vain, she is not above shamelessly lying to confuse suspects. She drives a supercharged 1935 Lagonda Rapide roadster painted her favorite color, lavender.
Mildew’s interests include flying, tennis, Tarot card reading, handwriting analysis, psychoanalysis, and fiction writing. She is addicted to electronic gadgets, things with wheels, and trash that might come in handy to fix something. Her dream is to rewire criminal minds with a virtual reality system more effective than genetic engineering. Her secret ambition is to fool Van Mutter with her disguises the way Sherlock Holmes deceived Watson.
Mildew’s nephew Max Taylor plays a recurring role in her adventures, much to his dismay. He fears that his aunt’s quaint concept of reality will jeopardize his assistant professorship in Anthropology at San Francisco State College. However he is very fond of her, as she adopted him at age six after his parents took off on a world cruise that never ended. Max has a talent for detection himself, which often proves helpful to Mildew despite her skepticism.
Since 1998 Mrs. Mildew has solved enough mysteries to fill two books and counting. She is more comfortable with intuition than with logic, and makes no secret of her belief in superstition and paranormal phenomena. She loves to share her experiences, especially with her nephew Max, and hopes to entertain readers well into the 21st Century and beyond.
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More about Molly McKinney’s books on http://mooncactusbooks.blog.com/.
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