Hooked Up

January 15, 2008
In their second racing adventure after "Swapping Paint", Nascar fans Ruby and Glad Wycznewski again solve a murder and a mystery, while everyone else is trying to find a missing $10 million dollars. Slapstick humor and nonstop dialog add to the fun.

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2007
Retired police officer Glad Wycznewski is looking forward to enjoying the NASCAR race at the Dover International Speedway when he finds his wife, Ruby, has offered his bed and pajamas to Bill, a down-and-out man she meets at a rest stop on the way to the track. When Glad goes to throw the man out of their RV, they find he is gone, leaving his cat behind. Glad and Ruby soon find Bill has fallen to his death from the racetrack stands, but Ruby is convinced that while the dead man looks like Bill, he is actually someone else. The police aren?t interested in her theory, so the two investigate Bill's death, which quickly connects to a kidnapping and $10 million in missing money. While the plot is rather convoluted and sometimes hard to swallow, Glad and Ruby are an appealing couple, and Glad's first-person account of how Ruby wraps him around her little finger is always amusing. NASCAR fans will enjoy the nicely entwined stock-car background, while nonfans will enjoy the characters and suspenseful plot.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)