Hello, Stranger
Virginia Swift [Virginia Scharff], 2006.
I read the first "Mustang" Sally Alder mystery, "Brown Eyed Girl", a few years ago, then recently re-read it and the next two, "Bad Company" and "Bye, Bye, Love", and had feared that the series was getting stale and repetitive. As with most series, there was a recurring cast of characters ... but unlike most, they were pretty much the same from the git-go, ex-boyfriend Hawk, the Langham family (sherrif Dickie and feisty, foul-mouthed barkeep Delice, wheeler dealer and band leader Dwayne), gay restaurateurs Burt and John-Boy, Maude Stark. No gradual accreting adventure by adventure as with, say, the Spenser series. And most of the standard cast hark back to Sally's whoopin' days in Laramie in the seventies, a period which is referenced ad nauseam, or at least ad boredom.
But "Hello, Stranger" is a delightful fresh start. The cast -- and not all of the cast, Dwayne for one being only tangentially mentioned -- are brought in primarily when they play an actual role, Dickie as Sheriff, for instance, or Maude protecting a clinic at an anti-abortion demonstration. [Unlike reviewer "amimo", I'm grateful for this whittling down of the old crowd ;-] Sally has settled firmly into her relationship with Hawk. The Old Days are referenced, but no longer such a focus. Also, Swift/Scharff's writing has tuned up a notch, with a fair number of memorable images and phrases. For instance (p. 71 of the hardcover), "She didn't feel like [productive work], so she took the slacker's way out. She decided to check her email."
The plot, also, seems more compelling. Just as Sally is meditating on how her feminism 101 lectures seem to fall on comatose ears, she's visited by a student who's been missing from class lately, Charlie [Charlotte] Preston, horribly beaten but refusing to see the police or hospital, only begging for money to make her getaway. Reluctantly, Sally empties her wallet and literally gives Charlie the coat off her back. Obsessed with Charlie's predicament, Sally delves deeper and uncovers a disturbing but vague history of abuse and mental problems, a powerful lawyer of a father and right-wing preacher of a step-mother. The plot deepens to include Charlie's seeming sleazebag of a boyfriend, low rent party dens, the Laramie real estate market ... and, oh yes, Sally stumbles across the corpse of Charlie's father, "Bad Brad" Preston and Charlie becomes the immediate suspect. There are side-plots also, Sally's attraction to liberal attorney Dave Haggerty (and continuing flutter of the heart for detective Scotty Atkins), pressure from her school to scrounge up funding. Complex, it all resolves and hangs together nicely in the end. Highly recommended.
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