Amazon Dana Mentink Category:  Mystery/Suspense Publisher: Barbour Books ISBN-10:  1597895075 Type: Fiction Pages: 248 Copyright: January, 2008 ISBN-13: 9781597895071 Two gruesome discoveries, her dead husband's secret novel and a body in Finny's town fountain push Ruth Budge to the edge of her sanity. But the final kicker comes when her hairdresser goes on vacation in Fiji, leaving widowed Ruth Budge to look like Dickens' Miss Havisham. A crazy kaleidoscope of characters such as the uptight gallery owner, Napoleon Prinn; half baked Dimple Dent, writer of fortune-cookie wisdom; Alva Hernandez, octogenarioan newspaper boy; and Monk, the amorous town caterer, add to the chaos in the shadow of Finny's nose until Ruth finds herself in the ultimate do-or-die situation. Excerpt Alva Hernandez walked his entire route along the foggy main street before he finally stopped to chat with the upside down man in the fountain. Eventually, he put down his remaining newspapers and whacked on one of the protruding muddy boots. Scratching his grizzled hair, Alva removed his teeth, inserted a lemon drop, and sat down to await further developments.

Trouble Up Finny's Nose
Reviewed by Sandra Robbins
An unfinished novel, a corpse in the town fountain, a flock of recuperating sea gulls, and a cast of quirky characters combine in Dana Mentink’s Trouble Up Finny’s Nose to transport the reader on a delightful reading journey .

Finny, a picturesque Pacific Ocean coast town that sits atop a steep bluff resembling a giant nose, is the setting of Dana Mentink's debut novel in Barbour's Heartsong Presents Mysteries line. As one soon discovers, however, the charm of the setting is enhanced by the quirky cast of characters that inhabit Finny.

When Ruth Budge, a nice, square woman as the author describes her, finds an unfinished romance novel that her late husband was writing, she is troubled that he kept it secret from her. Adding to her concern is the discovery of octogenarian Alva Hernandez sitting on the ledge of the town fountain that contains a dead body.

With characters like town caterer Monk, fortune cookie writer Dimple Dent, and art gallery director Napoleon Prinn in residence, the author skillfully weaves a story that combines humor with not one, but two murders. As the mysterious events concerning the deaths, drug smuggling, and family secrets converge in Finny, Ruth moves toward the moment when she must face a killer.

One of my favorite lines in the book comes when a policeman says the story is getting weirder by the minute. Ruth replies, "If it was a novel, I wouldn't pay a nickel for it." Dialogue like that peppers the entire book and makes it one of the most delightful reads I've had in a long time. The novel may cost more than a nickel, but it's definitely worth the investment if you want to relax and be entertained with an amusing and tangled mystery.