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 fast-paced adventures in Arizona, Africa, Mexico and the Caribbean are seasoned with whimsical humor, inspired by masters of the absurd including Dave Barry, S.J. Perelman, Stephen Potter and P.G. Wodehouse.
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While 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. Both divorced, the two met playing in a seniors tennis tournament and maintain a friendly state of one-upmanship on and off the courts.
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Mildew is petite and her sense of style ranges from antiquated to outrageous. Her undercover repertoire includes a variety of wigs, gaudy eyeglass frames like Dame Edna’s, a unique stun gun, and—imitating The Rockford Files TV series—business cards to suit any occasion. In addition to being opinionated and vain, she is not above telling shameless lies to pry information from suspects. She drives a supercharged 1935 Lagonda roadster in her favorite color, lavender.
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Mildew’s interests include flying, tennis, handwriting analysis, Tarot card reading, psychoanalysis, and fiction writing. She is addicted to electronic gadgets, anything with wheels, and remnants of all shapes and sizes that might come in handy for something. Her dream to rehabilitate criminals with a virtual reality program even more effective than genetic engineering.
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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 penchant for detective work himself which often proves helpful to Mildew despite her skepticism.
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Mrs. Mildew entered the mystery scene in 1998 and is still going strong in 2010. The only thing predictable about her adventures is the variety of settings and he whimsical humor. See more of Mrs. Mildew when In Plain Sight debuts in 2010, followed by Murder Mania in 2011.
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See Moon Cactus Books at http://mooncactusbooks.blog.com/ for CROCODILE TALE, Molly McKinney’s vintage romantic mystery novelette set in southern Africa during World War II.
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