Mission Improbable

Bang has a knack for adopting the most improbable causes...

Blanche "Bang" Murninghan was perfectly content sitting on the dock of the Peel 'n Eat Pier on Santa Maria Island, sipping an excellent draft and wiggling her fishing pole after an elusive sheepshead. Perfectly content, that is until Jean McMahon appears at her side and forever disrupts Blanche's peaceful idyll with ghosts of the past.

Blanche's amateur sleuthing skills have become local legend, and Jean needs her help. It's not a simple favor Jean asks: Will Blanche go to Vietnam with her and look for Jean's mother?

Blanche feels an old wound ripped open in her heart. Her father was killed in Vietnam, and she's never gotten much history from her beloved grandmother and mother on the subject. She realizes she and Jean share a powerful bond: they both want the truth.

Blanche and Jean don't stop once they land in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City. Ex-pat "Stick" Dahlkamp makes sure of that. They pick up the search together. The three cross the rice paddies on Stick's Honda Dream to Ben Tre and My Tho, old stomping grounds for Stick, a former Ninth Infantry Division Riverine and now the owner of the popular bar The Follies. He's got friends in jungle towns who might help, and indeed they do. And don't. Blanche begins to wonder if he's running them off the road.

As they trace Jean's mother's steps, they meet more than one shady character who thinks it better to let things lie. Against her better judgment, Blanche beats down the doors of the past. She is looking for Jean's mother and following her father's trail. He left without a trace. Or did he? Does anyone?

Mission Improbable: Vietnam is the third book in the Blanche Murninghan cozy mystery series. Each of the books can be read as a stand-alone. Foreword Reviews is in love with the "spunky heroine" and Kirkus Reviews says, "There's a reason Blanche Murninghan's cousin Jack calls her 'Bang.' When she gets mad, it's an event to rival a Santa Maria Island sunset-and it happens about as often."

Fans of Jana Deleon's Miss Fortune Mystery series and Tonya Kappes A Camper and Criminals Cozy series will fall hard for the colorful characters and exciting misadventures in the Blanche Murningnan Mysteries.