Welcome to the Kim Claypoole Mystery Series where you’ll meet wise-cracking, reluctant heroine and amateur sleuth Kim Claypoole. Thanks to her grandma, Claypoole owns  the Little Pigeon restaurant in Gatlinburg, Tennessee in the heart of the Smoky Mountains with her business partner Mad Ted Weber, who loves cigars and women. You’ll get to know a wide cast of characters including Kim’s mother Evelyn, AKA “The Other Scarlet O’Hara” and too many eccentric family members to count. Claypoole’s singing neighbors, Mindy and Cindy Huffman and their Chihuahuas George and Tammy and her loyal restaurant staff, Veodis, Vonda, Wyoming, Madeline and Zach are always around the action somewhere. You’ll  meet her snarly cop cousin, Officer Bucky Claxton, who ends up dragged into many of Kim’s adventures and her nephew Bucky Jr. who has a penchant for really bad decisions. You’ll also discover that Kim has a huge soft spot for damsels in distress and a habit of tripping into messy, often hazardous situations where she usually becomes a reluctant sleuth and accidental heroine.

Claypoole has a sizzling off and on again romance with Nancy Merit, a kind of East Tennessee version of Martha Stewart who has her own TV show. Nancy is married to Richard “Dickhead” Merit, a pompous international real estate developer who is constantly traveling which suits both Kim and Nancy just fine. Things get stirred up on the romance front when Claypoole bumps into an old flame and a very attractive FBI agent.

I started writing this series about ten years ago and before that I wrote more serious books and worked as a private investigator in Portland, Oregon. The first book in the series, Small Town Trouble, is out in eBook now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Untreed Reads and lots of other sources. The second and third books, Deep Trouble and Eternal Trouble are finished and I’ll keep you posted about their publication dates.

It’s been a good time hanging out with these characters, coming up with crazy, funny story lines and I have lots more stories to tell. Check out the Books page to read about the first three books in the series. I hope you have as much fun reading my books as I have writing them.