This series, set in a fictional and picturesque West Quebec town with a tourist based economy, features Fiona Silk, a would-be divorcée with a strong desire to be left alone, an urgent need to make some money, and an almost total lack of talent when it comes to writing romance novels. Nobody's perfect. She's a nice girl, and good friend, and the kind of person you can count on for a bit of humour if you're stuck overnight in a damp cave that smells of bear. Maybe she'll do better writing an erotic cookbook, although she's not much good in the kitchen either and it's been a long time since she had anything resembling a sex life.

"stylish and amusing..." - Macleans Magazine

Too Hot to Handle - NOW AVAILABLE - RendezVous Press
Oh dear. Maybe poor introverted Fiona Silk isn't the right person to compile an erotic cookbook. She still has no sex life, although maybe her great love will get his memory back. And she's not much of a writer really. Combine these with the small matter that she has no working oven and the state of her wiring is serious. Never mind, if you're about to lose your house for overdue taxes, you try to your best. What a shame so many things catch fire. As the bodies pile up, West Quebec's most reluctant sleuth must get the smoke out of her eyes before anything else goes up in flames.

The compelling painting above by Victoria Maffini was used for the cover of Too Hot to Handle.

Lament for a Lounge Lizard - 2003 RendezVous Press
As if it weren't bad enough being a failed romance writer, poor Fiona Silk has to cope with the spectacularly embarrassing demise of her old lover, the poet, Benedict Kelly in her four-poster bed. It's exactly the sort of thing people notice in St. Aubaine, Quebec, a picturesque bilingual tourist town of two thousand. Now the police start getting nasty, the media vans stay parked on her lawn and the neighbours' tongues keep wagging in both official languages. Worse, someone's bumping off the other suspects. Can Fiona outwit a murderer in the mood for some serious mischief.
ISBN 1-894917-02-2 / 280 pages / 5 1/8" x 7 1/2" / trade paperback / $13.95 CDN, $11.95 U.S.

"...as adept at comedy as she is at laying out a tangled crime trail...Maffini surrounds Fiona with memorable- but often annoying- friends...Surviving their needs and obsessions is almost as daunting as solving the murder." - Foreword Magazine

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