Crazy Lady: A Chief Inspector Bliss Mystery

Michael Payne is the City of Edmonton archivist and the co-author of A
Narrative History of Fort Dunvegan.

In this latest entry in the series of mysteries featuring Chief
Inspector David Bliss, much of the investigative load is carried by
madcap amateur sleuths Trina Button and Daphne Lovelace, who appeared in
an earlier Hawkins novel.

As the book opens, David Bliss is on leave in southern France,
struggling to complete a romance novel based on the story of the “Man
in the Iron Mask.” While working through his personal and writing
issues, he spots a woman who resembles his old love, the Dutch
policewoman Yolanda. At this point, his life and his novel take off on
parallel and often quite disconcerting paths.

Bliss’s life is complicated even further when his friendship with
Button and Lovelace draws him into another mystery. This one concerns an
apparently delusional woman with a complex past who becomes involved in
the death of a Vancouver policeman. Is she a murderer? What happened to
her children? And what is her connection to a mysterious, and perhaps
nefarious, chocolate manufacturer from Britain? Button and Lovelace
employ idiosyncratic investigative techniques as they seek to unravel
the book’s interconnected mysteries.

Fans of earlier mysteries by Hawkins will recognize his distinct
narrative style. But Crazy Lazy is more of a hybrid, combining elements
of a comic novel and a romance with a more traditional investigation
procedural.