The most recent death is going to hit much closer to home than even finding her former fiance’s body at her last job site.  When Georgie is in the crawlspace under her mother’s home to inspect the pipes, she finds Gregory’s body along with several cases of wine.  Georgie made no secret that she didn’t like her mother’s choice of husband, but did her best to be polite to the man her mother was going to marry.  Now instead of helping her mother plan her wedding, Georgie is helping her mount a defense after Sandra is arrested for Gregory’s murder. 

Georgie must sift through the life of a man she didn’t like but who was going to be her stepfather, to find what secrets he kept out of the pre-nuptial agreement that got him killed.  

The plot of Drip Dead is a little thin and Georgiana seems to cover the same ground several times as she searches for clues to find Gregory’s murderer.  Several times she stops short of what she is doing that might shed light on Gregory’s activities (opening a secret file she finds on her mother’s laptop, for instance) which doesn’t build tension, just drags the plot along. 

Georgie is very trusting of the people she encounters in her investigation and often takes what they say at face value, something that if she didn’t do might have helped her mother sooner.  Her relationship with high school sweetheart Wade is on track, though she does refer to an incident that caused one of her friends great pain (in high school) a few times too often. 

Though Georgie finds small town living awkward at times, such as when her best friend Sue wants to bring her boyfriend Fred, who happens to be the sheriff who arrested Sandra, along on double dates, she is fitting in to Pine Ridge and, without realizing it, creating a life for herself.  Not the strongest entry in this series, but Georgiana does have an interesting occupation (for someone with an MS in Computer Science)  and there are some helpful plumbing tips included.                                          

--Jennifer Monahan Winberry