Summer McAfee is a down-on-her-luck former lingerie model who starts a janitorial service in her Tennessee hometown after her divorce. Cleaning floors one night in the local mortuary, Summer is unexpectedly thrust in the midst of a deadly drug deal masterminded by a group of crooked cops. Before you know it, she's dropped her scrub brush and is on the run with Steve Calhoun, a former cop who lost his family, his job and his reputation three years earlier after a scandalous love affair with his best friend's wife.

The chase gets a little tedious after awhile -- why doesn't anyone ever remember to bring their wallet when they're running from the cops? And mystery writer Sue Grafton has nothing to fear in the way of competition from Ms. Robards -- detective novel aficionados will have the bad guy pegged very early into the book. But the love story is fun, and Ms. Robards is clearly having a good time with her characters, including a champion Pekinese named Muffy that saves the day on more than one occasion. All in all, the perfect book for an undemanding day by the pool.

--Leslie McClain