Who would have thought that a night of divas, queens, and beauties would turn into a dreadful crime scene flooded with gurneys, detectives, and dead bodies?
Annie Wall greets her readers with a pageant murder mystery involving the wannabee beauty queens of Springfield, a town famous for being the safest place to live in the country with a very low crime rate.
It was a great place to live until the night of Springfield’s Senior Pageant, when tragedy strikes and a detective duo is called to handle the case.
Detective Quimby and Lily Bright’s job is to find the culprit hiding behind the lifted, tucked, and liposuctioned queen bees, implying that even grandmas can be scary. But would it be easy to find a serial killer in a town where nothing “bad” happened for years? Springfield is safe but also has a strong gossip pipeline of older women chattering around at breakfast tables and get-togethers, discussing everyone and everything.
Scandals and a Small Town Are a Recipe for Disaster
Many people vacation in small communities to cool off and enjoy nature. But not in Springfield. If you are here and come across any of the women of the Silhouette Club, you’d be better off returning to your noisy city life. In their circle, a secret is like hot molten lava. None can keep it safe in their hands. It will always be tossed out to another gossiper like a nuclear fission reaction.
And, now that the focal person of the greatest event of the year is dead, the guessing game to find the culprit is spreading like wildfire. Naomi Hart, a Silhouette Club member and Director of the Ms. Senior Springfield Pageant, is found lifeless with her head dumped in the toilet of the backstage stall.
It is a crime scene, with stilettos and crazy women lurking around the corner playing the blame game and two detectives trying their best to make Springfield feel safe again.
Detective Quimby and Lily Bright: The Deadly Detective Duo
Quimby —The Star of the Show
Detective Quimby has been handling the homicide division of the Springfield Police Department all alone for years because of the small square feet area of the town. Everyone knows everyone, so detectives need to be on the radar. People here pretty much work as CCTVs.
Now that Quimby’s retirement years are approaching, he is excited to look forward to the salty air and a full night’s sleep. The pageant murder mystery is the only thing keeping him away from his dream of a peaceful life. Moving up the ranks and being a cop was not easy. It affected his married life; now that he has been divorced twice, he is comfortable living the bachelor life.
People often call Quimby the human lie detector. He is good at catching lies. As he is appointed to unravel the pageant murder mystery, he realizes what people would do to get the crown.
Lily Bright and Her Charming Presence
Lily is relatively new to homicide and will take over Quimby’s work when he retires. Although she has reached the detective rank on merit, rumor is that she is a byproduct of nepotism. Being the daughter of Mayor Bright and an only child, it was common to hear such baseless speculations about herself. Her doting grandmother raised Lily as she lost her mother in a hit-and-run accident. As Lily grew up, she understood what happened to her mother and felt that enrolling herself in law enforcement would help prevent more children from growing up without their moms.
Lily and Quimby are on a quest to find the culprit, who has been on a killing spree since the night of the pageant. Will they discover the murderer among the lovely and innocent, or is the murderer lurking in the shadows — unknown to all?
Find out in Annie Wall’s crime mystery novel, “Witches, Bitches, and Wannabe Queens,” the first book of her series, “The Secrets of Springfield.” It is a comedic crime thriller that fits the cozy reading preferences of an adult bookworm. Grab your copy now on Amazon!
