PELICAN BAY - A Maggie Skerritt Mystery is a fast paced, entertaining, rather light-hearted, murder mystery. Sounds like an oxymoron -- well you have to read it to understand the adjectives. Maggie Skerritt is great -- she's a funny, warm, vulnerable, flawed, and pretty much human police investigator. Oh and did I tell you -- she's 48 years old and single by choice. She's just the type of woman you would want for a good friend and by the end of the book you feel as if you just made a new one. She's part of a very small, small-town police squad whose very existence is in question due to budget concerns. But the immediate concern for Maggie and her co-investigators are the murders of members of a help group for overweight people. Someone is out to get the local "weight conscious" and everyone connected has alibis.

As you meet the players you are quick to judgment as to their guilt or innocence only to find a new flaw in your powers of deduction. Bill Malcolm is Maggie's very patient best friend -- lover -- who has been trying to convince her to marry him for over 20 years. This little fact gives you another glimpse into the character of Maggie -- as she explains over and over how Bill keeps jokingly proposing several times a year. Only Bill isn't joking. We get to meet Maggie's family including her very strait laced country club mother who is hell bent on getting Maggie married and settled into a more refined life style by setting up blind dates with guys who turn out to be gay. But you can't help but like Maggie -- rough language and all. After all how can you not like a woman who breaks out in hives over the stress of her job and then proceeds to dinner at the country club spotted with calamine lotion?

PELICAN BAY is a fast moving, page turner well written by Charlotte Douglas. Douglas does not waste words -- clues for the murders are found throughout the book. At any given point she has everyone looking guilty and then back to square one once again. Her dialogs are delightful and very funny. All the characters are multi-dimensional and so very human. The title suggests that this book is part of a series and I can't wait to meet up with Maggie once again.