Revenge of the Cootie Girls: A Robin Hudson Mystery

It's Halloween, a fitting night for this latest tale featuring genial, mildly lunatic Robin Hudson, executive producer of the Special Reports unit of the All News Network (last seen in Nice Girls Finish Last). Robin has asked her intern, Kathy, to join her and some friends for a special Girls' Night Out. But Kathy doesn't show up and then clues-resembling those written by Robin's childhood friend Julie long ago-crop up, ostensibly related to a murder mystery game to benefit a charity. Robin enlists her friends Tamayo, Claire and Sally to follow the clues and search for Kathy on a trail that leads Robin down memory lane. Everywhere the clues send them is a place that Robin and Julie went in 1979, when they were small-town Minnesota girls in New York for the first time in 1979, with two men they picked up. And many of the clues refer to their shared past as cootie girls-high-school social outcasts. As the night wears on, Robin learns that the man named George wasn't just a rich guy out on the town, but a gangster who was being pursued by the man she and Julie thought was his friend. She also finds a body and learns that Julie did not drop her acquaintance with George. As Robin and her friends respond to the clues, they realize that Kathy, Julie and George's family are all involved in a dangerous plot. Tripping down memory lane, the adult Robin discovers in this bittersweet but lively romp, can be as lethal as being a social pariah was in her teens. Author tour. (Apr.)