THE UNRAVELING OF VIOLETA BELL

Maddy Sprowls solves the murder of the Queen of Romania.

Violeta Bell grandly insisted she was Romania’s rightful monarch, even though the scrappy septuagenarian had been living for years in a retirement home in the States, spending Saturdays with three other old-timers hunting for yard-sale treasures under the watchful eye of weekend driver Eddie French. When Violeta is found in her undies shot through the heart in the fitness room, cub reporter Gabriella Nash tearfully wonders if her feature story on the group led to the murder. So many of Violeta’s antiques are found in Eddie’s house that he gets indicted, but when her boss’s wife challenges Maddy to prove the innocence of her dear sorority sister’s brother, Maddy agrees. The trail takes her to Canada’s Wolfe Island and the real pretender to the Romanian throne, then back to the corridors of the retirement home, where Violeta may have been romancing another old fogy who was three-timing his wife, and finally to Eddie’s digs, where Maddy unravels a fake antiques scheme. A whopping sexual secret will be disclosed before all is resolved, and Maddy can return to sorting and storing newspaper stories again.

The humor is a bit more forced than in Maddy’s earlier adventures (Dig, 2005, etc.), but Corwin’s plotting has improved. And newspaper junkies will still enjoy the city-room squabbling.