Snarky, delicious fun! The Camilla Randall mysteries are a laugh-out-loud mashup of romantic comedy, crime fiction, and satire. Think Bridget Jones meets Miss Marple.
Sherwood Ltd. takes aim at the world of small press publishing and all things British. It's a madcap tale of intrigue, romance and murder set near the real Sherwood Forest in the English Midlands.
After discovering a dead body near the dumpster where she's been diving for recyclables, down-on-her luck socialite Camilla Randall escapes to England, enticed by the charming Peter Sherwood—a self-styled Robin Hood who offers to publish a book of her etiquette columns at his unorthodox publishing company.
But murder and disaster follow her. She lands in a gritty criminal world—far from the Merrie Old England she envisions. The staff are ex-cons and the books are seriously kinky. Hungry and penniless, Camilla camps in a Wendy House built from pallets of porn while battling an epic flood, a mendacious American Renaissance Faire wench, and the mysterious murderer who may be Peter himself.
Sherwood Ltd. is the second in this humorous mystery series, but it can be read as a stand-alone.
Sherwood Ltd. is the second in the successful romatic-comedy-mystery series by blogging guro Anne R. Allen.
Chapter 1—The Man in the Green Hoodie
Anybody can become an outlaw. For me, all it took was a little financial myopia, an inherited bad taste in spouses, a recession—and there I was, the great-granddaughter of newspaper baron H. P. Randall, edging around in alley-shadows, about to become a common thief.
Okay, I was only stealing trash: a clear plastic bag stuffed with enough bottles and cans to redeem for a quart of milk. I’d seen it from the window of my friend’s San Francisco apartment where I was doing a little uninvited house-sitting. All I’d found to pour on my morning flax flakes was a dusty bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream. Not the best fortification for a day of job-hunting.
