Good, Clean Fun: a Meh-rathon

From A Nasty Little Dust-Up (Ms. Theroux Mysteries, #5):

The lady of the house said, haughtily, “It’s for you.”

Ms. Theroux took the phone from her. “Hello?” she said uncertainly. No one usually phoned her when she was working. It was bad form for a maid to receive calls on her client’s phones.

“Lizzy,” said the voice. It was Deputy Morten. “You have to get out of there. I know you hate leaving a house unclean, but it’s urgent. Leave and find a place to hide.”

“What kind of silly game is this, Deputy?” Ms. Theroux said, smiling nervously so as not to alarm the lady.

“It’s Doctor Hanfield,” Deputy Morten said. “They’ve found him. Dead. Done in by one of his own ridiculous inventions. An automated toilet scrubber. I won’t tell you how it was used. It’s not for a lady’s ears to hear. But whoever did it wanted to frame you, that’s for sure.”

Ms. Theroux gasped. It didn’t make any sense. Sure, she and Dr. Hanfield were rivals. After all, he sought to replace her ilk with confounding machines. But in the end, they wanted the same thing: a tidier world.

“Let me handle this, okay, Lizzy?” Deputy Morten said. But the maid’s mind was already racing. She had a new case to solve. And this time, her own freedom hung in the balance.

What better day for a spring-cleaning-themed Meh-ration than March 12th, the birthday of author Alicia Prescott? Creator of the character Ms. Theroux, the mystery-solving maid who appears in over 40 novels, Prescott has come to be known as “the queen of clean” in literary circles. So, stick around all day as we share excerpts from Prescott’s work, as well as tidbits from her letters, interviews, reviews, and more. Oh, and there will be deals too. On cleaning products. And also non-cleaning products.