All the Pretty Hearses

There's no "fun" in "fund-raiser" for Judith McMonigle Flynn when she donates an overnight stay at Hillside Manor, dinner included, to the parish school's annual auction—especially when the winning bid goes to the persnickety Paine family. She'll have her hands full sorting through the painfully picky Paines' endless allergies and aversions. Then hubby Joe lands in jail after his latest surveillance job abruptly ends with an insurance fraud suspect being blown away by a .38 Smith & Wesson . . . that just happens to belong to Joe.

But finding the real killer and dealing with the Paines' pain are just the tip of the iceberg—what with Judith's cantankerous mother, Gertrude, agreeing to let a wealthy parishioner stable a horse in her toolshed apartment; cousin Renie trying to force-feed her loathsome Shrimp Dump recipe to the parish cookbook fund-raising committee; and a number of parish school kids falling sick after their weekly hamburger lunch.