Pursued by the Crooked Man — Susan Trott

Maximiliana Bartha,Max to her lovers, Mom to her son, Miliana to her friends) believes that it is in the cards for her to die a violent death. And she assumes that most probably her husband, Dominic Racatelli, from whom she fled six years ago,taking quite a lot of his money along, will be the one to do the job. She is lying low but living high in Marin County, where she moved to be near her friend,Soo Yung Fong, a former virtuoso violinst now fallen on hard times. Here she has two lovers: Tom Flynn, a San Francisco fireman, and Joel Jarnding, a builder. Although she has no driver's license, no social security or credit cards through which she could be found, Dominic has his ways of tracking her down. Strange happenings begin to disturb the gay surface of Miliana's life. Someone turns up the temperature in her hot tub to a dangerous level while she is out walking the mountain trials, and then her house is set afire. Unbeknownst to her, Dominic is closing in, but he's not the only villain of the piece. Sensing her end, she commences her 'Legacy', her biography as presented in Mother Goose nursery rhymes. In this wonderful tragicomic work, Susan Trott has given us another of her marvelous heroines and a tale rich with the suspense and laughter of life itself.