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Summary: Toni Credella PI, A Rising Star
Comment: If Toni Credella had helped Alice when she asked, would Alice still be alive? Driven by guilt, Toni can't wait for the Baltimore Police Department to find her neighbor's murderer. The death of a street woman isn't as high on their priority list as that of the thirty year old corpse found two days earlier in the same area. Toni's priorities are different: Alice was her friend and lacking a motive for her death, Toni searches for a link between the two murders.Keep your eye on Louise Titchener's Toni Credella, Baltimore's most unlikely PI:
# She is smart -- street smart, that is. No slick, jet-setter, Toni's not a tougher-than-Hammer super woman, she doesn't bumble comically; she has no cat and never mentions knitting.
# Toni is very loveable but she's on the outs with a lot of people: she's estranged from her family and almost all of Baltimore's finest because she shot her drunken policeman husband when he nearly beat her to death.
# She's profoundly dyslexic, a high school drop out and unable to read or drive a car. For transportation she has just her own strong legs and a bicycle.
# Only sporadically hired as an interior decorator, she lives just slightly better than her neighbors, Baltimore's street people: she has a home -- a derelict she bought from the city and is redecorating with other people's cast-offs.
Toni Credella has some pretty strange friends:
# There's Randall, her gay attorney and O'Dell, one Baltimore Policeman who believes Toni's husband deserved what she gave him.
# There's her new boss, Maloney a former cop turned PI who is still hung up on his ex-wife.
# And there are her friendly neighbors Alice, Jimmy and Harmony of Baltimore's street community.
# Add to this mix a sister Sandy who disapproves of Toni, her home, her friends, her past, her present and her future, but who cries on Toni's shoulder whenever she has a problem with her husband Al, another Baltimore policeman who detests Toni.
The way Ms. Titchener writes, the reader forgets he's not right beside Toni on the streets of Baltimore, in the soup line or at the docks in this colorfully peopled story told in rich, full-bodied, yet concise detail. She weaves the complex personalities of the characters into the fabric of the story so adroitly that the reader would recognize them from across the street and rush over to drop a dollar in a cap or slink away hoping to remain unnoticed.
As the story unfolds, Toni tries to put together a life for herself after being acquitted of killing her husband. She has to balance her desire for love with her desire to make a living, learn self confidence as well as self defense and find absolution for her guilt. In the process she escapes attempts on her life and ultimately proves her mettle as a PI -- Toni is an over comer.
This incredibly well crafted story keeps the reader riveted with its intrigue and expressive writing. It's impossible to read Buried in Baltimore without clamoring for the next Toni Credella adventure. I give Buried in Baltimore by Louise Titchener a full five stars; it's an outstanding PI mystery.
