An Equal Opportunity Death

To escape arrest for her best friend’s murder, Vejay must find the real killer--before it’s too late
In the small woodsy town of Henderson, California, the electric company is strict about sick days. So when meter-reader Vejay Haskell decides to play hooky, her first concern is staying out of sight. She skirts around the edge of town, making her way to Frank’s Place, a cozy saloon owned by her friend Frank Goulet. After two cups of hot buttered rum, they have an argument and she storms out into the pouring rain. She goes home, takes a nap, and awakens sober, embarrassed, and ready to apologize. But by the time she gets back to Frank’s bar, he is dead. Vejay was seen leaving Frank’s house in a huff, and her lack of an alibi combined with her suspicious sick day makes her the number-one suspect. As the police close in on her, Vejay turns detective in search of Frank’s real killer. It’s a perilous task, but she has one advantage when she puts on her work clothes: Nobody ever notices the meter-reader.

Susan Dunlap is a prolific author of mystery novels. Born in New York City, Dunlap majored in English at Bucknell University and earned a masters degree in education from the University of North Carolina. She was a social worker before an Agatha Christie novel inspired her to try her hand at writing mysteries. Six attempts and six years later, she published Karma (1981), which began a ten-book series about brash Berkeley cop Jill Smith. Since then, Dunlap has published more than twenty novels and numerous short stories. Her other ongoing characters include the meter-reading detective Vejay Haskell, former forensic pathologist Kiernan O’Shaughnessy, and Zen student/stunt double Darcy Lott. In addition to writing, Dunlap has taught yoga, worked as a paralegal, and helped found Sisters in Crime, an organization created to support women in the field of mystery writing. She lives near San Francisco.