Deborah Sharp's 'Mama' almost always knows best

"Mama Rides Shotgun," by Deborah Sharp. Midnight Ink. 324 pages. $14.95.

Deborah Sharp, former reporter for The News-Press and USA Today, is one of those intriguing Florida mystery writers who make us laugh out loud while we're reading.

In "Mama Rides Shotgun," the second title in her projected three-part Mace Bauer Mystery series, Ms. Sharp enhances her key characters.

Mace, the narrator, is an amateur sleuth whom danger will find. Self-reliant to a fault, her love life is troubled by her sense of being patronized, even by well-meaning men. She'd rather do it herself. Her mother — oft-married and gossipy Rosalee — constantly and loudly offers unwanted advice about this problem, and Mama gets involved in the mystery plot as well. The family quartet that also includes Mace's sisters, Marty and Maddie, provides hilarious hi-jinks and sublime sibling rivalry.

Ms. Sharp sets her stories outside of the big cities and the dense coastal populations. She portrays and memorializes Central Florida, once wild, then wild and agricultural, and now threatened by every kind of encroachment but still clinging to its unique heritage. Cracker country.

Deborah Sharp

The author finds the perfect spatial and temporal boundaries for her plot by placing her characters in the annual Florida Cracker Trail Ride, a west-to-east state crossing of several days that celebrates Florida's horse and cattle heritage. She picks up the story as Mama and Mace encounter a wealthy landholder and benefactor of the event, Lawton Bramble, whom Mama dated in high school. Soon enough, Lawton is found dead. Could be someone has poisoned his famous Cow Hunter Chili. Could simply be the old ticker gave out. Mace suspects foul play.

Among those with opportunity and motive are Lawton's gorgeous trophy wife, Wynonna, whose reactions to her husband's death just don't set right with Mace and Mama — nor does her behavior toward her step-son, Trey. Then there's Trey himself, a n'er-do-well alcoholic tired of not measuring up and living in his father's shadow. And there's at least one former friend and business partner to consider. As Mace investigates, several incidents occur that seem designed to send her and Mama packing, and thereby ending Mace's inquiries.  When Val, the horse Mace has borrowed, is struck by a whip, Val's wild response threatens serious injury to Mace. Moreover, Mace's tent is mysteriously shredded, and a snake is found in her jacket.

Mama's horse, Shotgun (thus the title), is panicked by bees, and Mama ends up with a twisted ankle.

When Austin Close, a former fiancée of Trey's, directly threatens Mace, it seems her motive for getting Mace out of the way is because she imagines Mace is her rival.

Romance — thwarted, perverted or conflicted — is everywhere. Most notable is the frustrated, smoldering attraction between Mace and her ex-beau, Carlos Martinez, a former Miami detective now working out of Mace's hometown of Himmarshee. Mr. Martinez, too, gets involved in the investigation, and his seeming attraction to Belle Bramble, Trey's sister, causes Mace all kinds of emotional turmoil. Advice from Mama and Mace's sisters only adds to her dismay.

The author's large cast of well-drawn characters requires careful stage-managing, and the author is up to the challenge. Mama's intended, a hulking New York Mafiosi look-alike named Sal, along for the ride in his capacious Cadillac, is a pleasant surprise. Doc Abel, who attends to the Lawton family and is on hand for injuries along the Trail, is another.

Ms. Sharp's confidant handling of the event's cultural flavor — the camping, the food service, the terrain, the spectacle, even the music — contributes mightily to the reader's pleasure. Although she resolves the mystery with skill, it is the uproarious fun of the nonstop yet affectionate bickering between Mace and Mama that allows "Mama Rides Shotgun" to win the reader's heart.