Bad News Travels Fast

Retirees Dottie and Joe Loudermilk, who cruise the land in a trailer home, hit Washington, D.C., to visit their son Eddie in this humorous second entry in the series after Going Nowhere Fast. Dottie, an ex-professor, and Joe, an ex-cop, are salt-of-the-earth, politically conservative black Americans utterly baffled by Eddie's lefty politics. When, after picking a fight with Eddie, his former roommate turns up dead, Joe and Dottie have a case to crack. They believe their son when he says he didn't kill the man, even though witnesses place him at the scene. The only clue seems to be the man's vague boasting that he had just ``optioned some book'' that would electrify D.C. and make him famous. Grumbling all the way, Joe uses his police smarts to scout up leads, but it's the courageous and sometimes foolish Dottie who presses issues and makes dead ends open up. Haywood (who also writes the Aaron Gunner detective series) gets the narrating Dottie's voice just right; she meets her grown children with a delightfully entertaining blend of frustration and devotion. (July)