Homemade Sin

May 30, 1994
The third appearance of Callahan Garrity, the quondam PI and owner of the House Mouse cleaning service who was last seen in Every Crooked Nanny , is a page-turner. When her cousin Patti McNair is shot to death in her new Lexus near the Garden Homes project in Atlanta, Callahan refuses to believe it was a senseless murder resulting from a random robbery. Learning that things may have been amiss in Patti's marriage to successful, secretive attorney Bruce, Callahan employs her clue-ferreting skills to stay ahead of the official investigation. She tracks an allegedly wayward priest, Bruce's Dixie mob clients and a crack-dealing gang leader before figuring out the identities of the bad guys and barely escaping with her life from a confrontation in a cemetery. While Trocheck captures more of the geography than the texture of Atlanta and seems to limit African American characters to the roles of domestics, gang lords and project-dwellers, Callahan, still dealing with breast cancer and living with longtime lover Mac, remains a gutsy '90s heroine.

June 15, 1994
When Patti McNair is senselessly blown away in an Atlanta carjacking with her young son asleep on the back seat, her cousin Callahan Garrity suspects that it may not have been a random act. Callahan is a part-time PI, a former Atlanta cop, and the full-time owner of the House Mouse cleaning service, catering to wealthy Atlanta suburbanites. She sweeps into action, tapping all of her best contacts, despite her family's insistence that she leave widower Bruce and his children alone. There are just too many unanswered questions. Why has Patti's sister moved in with Bruce and the kids? Why has Bruce split with his law partner to team up with a clutch of seedy comedy-club owners? Callahan threads her way through project gangs, a tax-starved public infrastructure, and her obstreperous and wacky family to nail the murderer. In Callahan, Trocheck (To Live and Die in Dixie, LJ 7/93) has given us another worthy member of the lady PI genre. Recommended for general collections.-Susan Clifford, Hughes Aircraft Co. Lib., Los Angeles