SICK AS A PARROT

A neurotic parrot and a homeless ex-colleague distract private eye Grace Smith (Don’t Mess with Mrs. In-Between, not reviewed, etc.) from her latest case: the decades-old murder of a teacher by her favorite student.

Hard-boiled Smith must be going soft. Not only does she agree to pet-sit Tallulah, an African Gray whose eremiophobia makes her dash herself against the bars of her cage when left alone, but she lets odiferous Terry Roscoe, who made life tough for her when they worked on the force together, crash at her pad until his wife’s ready to take him back. And she takes on a case only a masochist could love: proving that Hannah Conti’s birth mother, Alison Wynne-Ellis, didn’t commit murder shortly before Hannah's unplanned arrival. Since police up-and-comer Clive Pennington gathered such compelling evidence that Alison fatally slashed Trudy Hepburn, a teacher at St. Martin’s Comp who’d taken introverted Alison under her wing, that 16-year-old Alison was convicted, Grace has an uphill battle. Worse, Alison and her parents won’t talk, her next-door neighbor Philip Darrowfield has a degenerative disease and can’t talk, and her former classmate Orlando Roles talks but says nothing. Now Grace’s only hope is her e-mail correspondence with a mysterious classmate dubbed “Betterman” and an even more mysterious ex-cop named O’Hara with a fondness for French cuisine.

Just when you think you’ve solved it, Evans throws another twist into this clever puzzle.