Dyce does the best she can to make ends meet, refinishing furniture for income, perhaps not the best occupation for a single mother with a curious two-year-old son. Ben, Dyce’s gay best friend from high school, often pitches in when Dyce needs him, especially now that his lover has  trashed his apartment and Ben must stay someplace else while the disaster team is cleaning it up.

While dumpster diving for furniture to refinish, Dyce uncovers the body of a woman who looks like she has fallen (or been pushed) into a vat of lye. Hunky Officer Cas Woolf doesn’t necessarily think Dyce is a murderer, but thinks she can be a great source of information with regards to the world of refinishing and thinks she is pretty cute and a good dancer as well! 

Dyce begins to think that finding the body was more personal than she thought when her apartment is broken into twice. At the second break-in, the body of a fellow finisher, also a bit gooey after a swim in lye, is found in her shed. Wolf charges Ben to keep Dyce safe, but she gives Ben the slip easily and, before long, finds herself almost up to her neck in lye.

 Dipped, Stripped and Dead has potential to be a great start to a new series and is the kind of book readers are really going to want to like, but it never really comes all together.  The characters come across as not particularly interesting, although when they do show flashes of personality, there is promise. 

Dyce almost seems proud of the fact that Enoch’s diet consists mainly of pancakes. While she is earning money refinishing furniture, she comes up short often and spends a lot of time with very harsh chemicals. So she must rely on All-ex, Ben or her parents to mind Enoch. Dyce is very engaging at times and brave, but almost too fearless for a single mother. Officer Woolf is quickly taken by Dyce and falls hard and fast for someone he just met and someone who found a dead body and might have motive, means and opportunity. 

The mystery is straight forward and not that hard to figure out.  There are some good moments, a lot of interesting tidbits about furniture and the process of refinishing and characters with a great deal of potential, just somehow, it all doesn’t gel this first time out.                                                                  

--Jennifer Monahan Winberry