Dead Head (Dirty Business Series #3) »

ROSEMARY HARRIS has worked in marketing for Crown Publishers and American Express Travel Related Services and as a producer for Disney/ABC and WNET. She lives in New York City and Connecticut.

The talented Rosemary Harris continues to pick up steam, garner acclaim, and collect fans with her quirky, beloved Dirty Business Mystery series

Fugitive Mom. That’s the tabloid headline that rocks Springfield, Connecticut when one of the town’s favorite ladies is discovered to be an escaped convict. With a little help from the always game Lucy Cavanaugh, Paula is hired to find out which of her neighbors is a fugitive from the law and why the long-kept secret has finally come out.

Publishers Weekly

In Harris’s enjoyable third Dirty Business mystery (after 2009’s The Big Dirt Nap), Paula Holliday, amateur sleuth and gardening professional of Springfield, Conn., learns that one of her best clients, Caroline Sturgis, is actually Monica Jane Weithorn, the “Fugitive Mom” who escaped prison—where she was serving time for drug dealing—25 years earlier. Paula, whose landscaping business is suffering in the current bad economy, had been considering going into partnership with Caroline. Caroline’s distraught husband hires Paula to discover who turned his wife in to the authorities. Sgt. Mike O’Malley, a Springfield cop and Paula’s friend, wants to know more, too, ditto Paula’s journalist friend, Lucy Cavanaugh, who plans to do a story on Monica/Caroline. First-person flashbacks from Monica/Caroline add a depth missing from Paula’s previous outing. (Apr.)