Crazy Fool Kills Five
Gwen Freeman
Reviewed by Jaimie Bell
Fifi Cutter is back and packing an attitude in the latest
installment of an entertaining and quirky mystery series.
Working as an independent insurance adjustor Fifi is
currently trying to investigate a man for workers compensation fraud.
Bi-racial
and cynical she is barely scraping enough money together to feed her
sponging
half brother Bosco, who lives with her in an empty house.
Courtesy of the divorce settlement between
her narcissistic mother and now late father, she sleeps on an air
mattress and
uses a card table to eat and work at. But things may be looking up now
that her
friend VJ got her a job as a document clerk for trial attorney Reginald
Wong in
an enormous wrongful death lawsuit.
The case involves a mentally unstable and disgruntled
ex-employee of Skyblu Charter Jet Service who sneaks aboard a plane and
shoots
the pilot in flight. The plane goes down killing the co-pilot, two
well-to-do
Chinese businessmen, and of course the shooter. The wreckage then
crashes onto
a Winnebago, crushing the luckless, newly retired man inside. Suing the
wealthy
company seems the most lucrative course of action and with sixty
million
dollars at stake, ICARUS, standing for Insurance Coverage Aviation
Risks United
States, gets involved.
Things go wrong pretty quickly and bodies begin piling up
including the grandmother of the unstable shooter and the man Fifi had
initially been assigned to investigate for insurance fraud. A purse
snatching
and almost getting run off the road bring danger close to home and Fifi
knows
something in the vast amount of documents must be of great value to the
killer.
Bosco decides to get involved and borrows a car which turns out to be a
Matchbox sized British issue ’57 Squire Ford and Fifi valiantly learns
to drive
it even though it has a push button start and steering wheel on the
right side.
Bosco also lends a hand at the nursing home when a stranger calls up
demanding
access to the dead grandmother’s belongings. When the case is suddenly
settled
and an unlikely witness who understands Chinese gives Fifi the lowdown
on the
confidential financial agreement, things really start to heat up and
not just
with Dan, the handsome member of opposing counsel.
This is a very entertaining and fast paced mystery and I was
halfway through the book before looking up. Gwen Freeman has a natural
writing
style that is breezy and effortless. Fifi’s family issues are both
funny and
painfully real which makes her seem genuine and realistically flawed.
She says
the wrong things and makes some questionable decisions but never gives
up and
always keeps her head held high. I really like her as a protagonist.
Bosco is a
hilarious character that is useless and surprisingly helpful in turn. A
myriad
of twists and turns lead to a surprising and very LA style conclusion.
Gwen Freeman has also written Murder…Suicide…Whatever…