Hat makers are alive and working New York City with a “great spirit of milliner cooperation,” and in fact, their greatest fear is not of competition within the ranks, but with bare-headedness. Therefore, Brenda Midnight is not surprised when her friend and fellow milliner, Fuzzy, calls with the scoop that Doreen Sands, the head millinery buyer at Castleberry’s department store, is on a buying frenzy and to hurry on over.

Brenda arrives with her hatboxes for her appointment at Castleberry’s a week later and Brenda learns Doreen Sands has been murdered. She knows the officers in charge, and they send her home to interview later.

Brenda is familiar with Detectives Turner and McKinley through her “on again/off again” boyfriend Johnny Verlane, who is the star of the top rated Tod Trueman -- Urban Detective television show. Johnny had followed Turner and McKinley around while they were working to learn how to act like a real detective on his show. Brenda’s relationship with them is iffy at best, and although she has done a few favors for them in the past, they didn’t appreciate her help. She is both shocked and dismayed when the murder weapon is discovered in her hatbox, and she is worried that she will be the prime suspect.

Turner and McKinley call and ask a surprised Brenda to join them for lunch, where they introduce their blond, ponytailed companion as Officer Nicole Gundermutter and present Brenda to her as the “best damned milliner on West Fourth Street.” She is truly shocked to learn they have hit a snag in the case and is surprised when they ask her to help them out.

They want Brenda to teach Officer Gundermutter how to act less like a cop and more like a department store employee so she can go undercover at Castleberry’s. Officer Gundermutter is new to the police force and wants to make her first arrest, so she is gung-ho to form a partnership with Brenda in order to solve the crime.

As an amateur sleuth, Brenda is not always very bright, although she is determined and tenacious. She unthinkingly suspects her best friend of murder without researching a possible alibi or motive. She withholds information from the police thinking that she is protecting her friends, or perhaps she presumes the police are inept. As luck would have it, she does beat the police to the finish line by discerning the murderer’s identity, yet the finale is a comedy of errors that barely leaves our heroine unscathed.

Capped Off is bursting with offbeat and friendly characters who are recognizable as real people, but are stacked so closely together that they resemble the characters in a comedic sit-com and are as entertaining. More difficult to piece together is the current relationship between Brenda and Johnny, since they appear to be just friends. They allude to having reached a new plateau in their relationship, a relationship in which they now agree “it was okay to drop in on each other unannounced.” Perhaps a previous book in the series explains their relationship in more depth and its history.

All in all, the highly original plot has numerous twists and turns and is packed full of action. Each time the plot becomes unbelievable, the author throws in something particularly unusual or amusing to redeem it. One of these delights is the millinery extravaganza entitled “Milliners Milling Around the Millennium,” an event I would love to attend myself. Ms. Wilson definitely knows the millinery business and does a notable job of showcasing it.

--Monica Pope