For the uninitiated, Charlie Plato is part owner of CHAPS, a country-western nightclub in the San Francisco area. The club’s co-owners are: Savanna Bristow, who’s drop-dead gorgeous and married to a police detective, Angel Cervantes, a mysterious cowboy-type, and Zack Hunter, a former TV star and (as Charlie refers to him) an all-American sex god.

In Dying To See You, the gang has agreed to rent the club to various groups on Monday evenings as a way to pick up additional money. One of the first groups to take advantage of this opportunity is Savanna’s old high school classmates, using CHAPS to hold their twentieth reunion. Unfortunately, right in the middle of the festivities, one of their former teachers, Miss Reina Diaz, is found strangled in the women’s rest room.

Since the murder has been committed at CHAPS and Charlie is the one that discovers the body, she feels she has an obligation to jump right in and investigate. Besides, Charlie’s well-known for her...let’s just be kind and say, inquisitive nature. But Charlie’s also no fool, there’s a murderer running around, so she brings Zack along while she questions the group from the reunion.

Zack is the perfect person to have on your side during an interrogation. Although he’s not known for his great intellect (to put it mildly), he did portray the well-loved Sheriff Lazarro in the popular, long-running TV series, Prescott’s Landing. It never ceases to amaze Charlie how people confuse Zack for his alter ego and are more than willing to confide in him.

Charlie can also understand why women are drawn to Zack, she’s attracted to him herself. But self-preservation keeps Charlie away from a relationship with Zack. She learned the hard way after her marriage to Rob Whittaker, plastic surgeon to the stars. The marriage ended when she discovered him doing a little extra curricular procedure with a Hollywood starlet.

Soon, another reunion attendee is murdered and Charlie’s beloved CHAPS is threatened. Things have become personal, giving Charlie and Zack even greater incentive to solve the mystery. Although the murderer had to be someone from the reunion, the reader is kept guessing throughout most of the book. I figured things out at the same point that Charlie did.

Dying To See You is the fifth book in the Charlie Plato series. It can stand alone, but since author Margaret Chittenden’s greatest strength is in her characterizations, my recommendation is to track down the previous books, starting from the beginning. Watching the characters develop over the course of the series has been half the fun.

Especially now…. when there is hint of a change in the relationship between Charlie and Zack. I can hardly wait until the sixth installment of this entertaining series.

--Karen Lynch