Part of Series
Jolie moves to Great Aunt Madge’s B&B at the Jersey shore, taking her cat Jazz, and joining Madge's pair of prune-eating dogs. Jolie does not view this as a retreat from her embezzling ex-husband, just a smart change. She had no idea her life was about to get even more complicated. Jolie finds work as a real estate appraiser, but a low-life named Joe Pedone demands that Jolie repay her husband’s gambling debts and she runs into Michael Riordan, her high school crush. She's not sure which one is more trouble. Jolie appraises his mother's house and finds his mother dead in bed. Soon the mundane work of appraising real estate and dodging suggestions to attend the ten-year high school reunion is mixed with calls from reporters, scary suggestions from Pedone, and requests that she help the local busybody with First Presbyterian's social services work. Jolie balances her fear of Pedone, belief that Michael is innocent, and sometimes uneasy friendship with long-ago friend Scoobie. Her list of murder suspects includes Michael's soon-to-be-ex wife and a couple other beneficiaries of Mrs. Riordan's will. Those suspicions don't include Scoobie, but he makes it to the police department's list. Jolie wants to prove both friends innocent. But will Pedone's plans leave her alive to find the truth?
Author
Also published as Elaine L. Orr Elaine L. Orr has authored 30 works of fiction, including four mystery series. They include the thirteen-book Jolie Gentil cozy mystery series, which is set at the Jersey shore. "Behind the Walls" was short-listed for the 2014 Chanticleer Mystery and Mayhem Awards. "Demise of a Devious Neighbor," second of the River's Edge series, set in Iowa, was a Chanticleer shortlister in 2017. The Western Maryland mountains host the four-book Family History Mystery Series, which began with "Least Trodden Ground." The "Unscheduled Murder Trip" received a B.R.A.G. Medallion in 2021. Small-town Illinois is the setting for the Logland Series, which features Police Chief Elizabeth Friedman—a police procedural with a cozy feel. Elaine also writes plays and novellas, including the one-act, "Common Ground," published in 2015. Her novella, "Biding Time," was one of five finalists in the National Press Club's first fiction contest, in 1993. "Falling into Place" is a novella about family strength as a World War II veteran rises to the toughest occasion. "In the Shadow of Light" is the fictional story of Corozón and her family, who are separated at the U.S./Mexico border. A member of Sisters in Crime, Elaine grew up in Maryland and moved to the Midwest in 1994.
