A former Senior Vice President in the banking industry did little to satisfy Gayle Wigglesworth’s cravings to be, well, creative. So she spent her spare time away from organization and management learning to be a potter. A current resident of Houston, she and her husband regarded the move from San Francisco as a “foreign assignment,” but they became attached to Houston. She and her husband love to read and travel, and she is presently working on her third Claire Gulliver mystery, INTRIGUE IN ITALICS.
Claire Gulliver is the proud owner of “Gulliver’s Travels,” a travel bookstore in San Francisco. She is a former librarian, is in her forties, and so far hasn’t been married. But her relatively quiet life is interrupted in the first CG mystery, TEA IS FOR TERROR, where she tangles with foreign terrorists after she agrees to take a travel group for a friend. WASHINGTON WEIRDOS opens with Claire reluctantly emerging form her safe bookstore to accept an award from the grateful owners of Vantage Airlines, Inc. for her part in foiling a bomb on one of their flights. Almost immediately she is mugged on the Washington Mall, and just as the knife of her attacker can do any real damage, her friend Jack tackles the would-be killer: “The body came out of nowhere, slamming into him sideways with a force which sent them both to the ground. The knife flew through the air; the streetlight gleaming off the blade traced its trajectory. She wanted to run, to scream, to cry for help but she stood mutely rooted. Her eyes were riveted on the men on the ground in front of her. He would-be attacker rolled free and came up on all fours. He was poised, looking at the knife, which lay temptingly only a few feet away. But her rescuer’s hand protectively hovered over it, his gaze fastened on the attacker’s eyes.”
Page one to the end, Claire Gulliver is a librarian with lots of guts, and her friend Jack, an employee of “The Company” mesh together to form an unstoppable team. Wigglesworth has managed to continue the saga she began in TEA IS FOR TERROR and emerge with a plot that is as lustrous as the first tale. WASHINGTON WEIRDOS is a stunning second book.
Shelley Glodowski
Senior Reviewer
Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)