K. K. BECK

CHARACTER:	JANE Da SILVA
CATEGORY:	PACIFIC NORTHWEST

Jane Da Silva was bumming around Europe as a cafe singer when her money finally ran out. She came home to Seattle and found that her rich, eccentric, and newly deceased uncle had left her his Capitol Hill mansion and his fortune, on the condition that she find and solve "hopeless" cases. Her choice of case and the determination of a successful solution are to be approved by a board of trustees, also named in her uncle's will. Of course, the board is never totally pleased, and Jane is forever on probation. The formula for these books gives an amateur detective a good excuse to nose around in areas that are plainly none of her business, and they give the author a good excuse to dream up quirky and diverting (if unlikely) plots.

A Hopeless Case
Amateur Night
Electric City
Cold Smoked

REVIEWS

Cold Smoked:

Synopsis:

Low on cash and waiting for a case to turn up, Jane is singing in a Seattle hotel, when a young woman working as a hostess at a seafood convention is shot to death in the bathtub of a hospitality suite. Jane embarks on a chase that leads her to the Arctic Circle, Scotland's Shetland Islands, and back to Seattle, where yet another corpse awaits her.

From Kirkus Reviews, 12/14/95:

Seattle's Jane da Silva (Electric City, 1994, etc.), one of the genre's ditzier sleuths, takes on her fourth ``hopeless case.'' This time, while working as a lounge singer at the Meade Hotel, site of an international seafood show and convention, Jane is called on for help by food-writer Carla Elroy, who has discovered the body of Marcia St. Francis, shot to death, in a hospitality- suite bathroom. Jane had seen Marcia earlier in the company of hard-drinking Norwegian Trygve Knutsen and, after the police arrive, glimpses Knutsen again, in the corridor, trying to hide a handcuff dangling from one wrist. Marcia's bewildered parents, out of touch with their daughter for months, beg Jane to explore her recent past and maybe find her killer. When Carla is fired from her job at Seafood News magazine, she agrees to coach Jane as her replacement, and so our heroine has the perfect cover to pursue her fuzzy suspicions. She travels to Norway and the Shetland Islands, hearing persistent rumors of sabotage at worldwide salmon farms; keeps running into Gunther Kessler, who may or may not be in refrigeration; and meets the Putnam brothers, who can't wait to show her their pollack roe separator. In the end, it's a tape sent in error that puts the finishing touches on this ill-blended bouillabaisse. The fish lore is interesting, and Jane's mixed-up persona retains its charm. But the also mixed-up plot, overloaded--dare one say--with red herrings, is an unpalatable stew. -- Copyright ©1995, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Electric City :

From Kirkus Reviews, 06/14/94:

Why would inoffensive Irene March of the Columbia Clipping Service have gone AWOL just a few days after her triumphant TV stint on Jeopardy! left her $20,000 richer? That's what her fellow clippers at Columbia want Jane da Silva, Seattle's pro bono sleuth of last resort (A Hopeless Case, 1992), to find out, and it isn't long before Jane has a theory: Irene was taking advantage of her nose for news to run a little petty blackmail on the side, and one of her victims (the charter fisherman arrested for soliciting? the mother who moves from town to town organizing fund-raisers for her ``critically ill'' daughter? the state senator's wife carrying on with a much younger apple-orchard heir?) may have learned enough about her to track her down. Meantime, though, Jane's inquiries have taken her over the mountains to Coulee City and Pateros, where she meets the apple-grower in question, sexy sometime country singer Jack Lawson, and falls into his arms. Will she be able to keep cool enough to solve the mystery of Irene's disappearance- -oops, Irene's murder--ahead of the police and to satisfy the demanding board of the Foundation for Righting Wrongs so that they'll approve her funding? Well, no. Jane and her story are as likeable as ever, but the mystery is a muddle of suspicious behavior, broken alibis, and enough unanswered questions (e.g., what does all this have to do with Irene?) to keep a reference librarian--or a clipping service- -busy for years. No wonder Jane's foundation won't pay her off. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.