Strange Brew

September 29, 1997
Callahan Garrity, a former Atlanta cop and now a housecleaning entrepreneur and PI, stars in her sixth appearance (after Heart Trouble, 1996), a riveting adventure that begins on a storm-tossed Halloween. After a lethal tornado blows through town on the biggest party night of the year at a local bar in a rapidly gentrifying Atlanta neighborhood, Callahan finds the body of microbrewery owner-manager Jackson Poole in the building he had just bought and was in the process of renovating. An angry woman called Wuvvy, an aging hippie whom Poole evicted when he bought the building, is missing--and presumed by the police to be Poole's killer. Wuvvy, who was once convicted of another murder charge, telephones Callahan, asking her to reclaim her meager belongings and to tell the police she's innocent. Callahan agrees to try to help, but then Wuvvy's body is found in her van, an apparent suicide. The police are happy to close the case at that point, but Callahan is suspicious because so many niggling details are left hanging; so she willingly agrees to work for Poole's lover to find out the whole story behind his death. While keeping track of her flighty mother, her cleaning crew and her lover, Mac, Callahan pursues the mystery into Poole's and Wuvvy's past and unearths unwholesome secrets of another family. Author tour.