“The girls grew up together during the sixties in Notre Dame de Grâce, on the outskirts of downtown Montreal. Each of them kept a picture that was taken in the summer of 1965. They were ten years old and looked as if they hadn’t seen a comb in weeks, with missing teeth, knobby knees, and skinny arms protruding from ugly striped t-shirts and dirty high-waisted jeans.”
Hit & Mrs.
Linda, Bette, Gemma, and Augusta are lifelong friends who live in Montreal. This year they’re all going to turn fifty, and to soften the blow they decide to take a trip to New York together (courtesy of Linda’s philandering husband’s Visa Platinum). But after a bag mix-up at LaGuardia airport, things start going terribly wrong. When they accidentally kill an aggressive cab driver, the four friends know this is not the trip of shopping and Broadway shows they’d expected. A series of miscommunications and mishaps entangles the friends in the criminal underworld of New York – and from all the bad luck (Linda’s husband is staying at the same hotel as the friends, with his new girlfriend) and bad people (mobsters, drug adddicts…and Linda’s husband) emerge four fifty-year-old avengers of truth and justice.
A hilarious romp through the big city, Hit & Mrs. celebrates friendship, family, and chutzpah along the way.
Excerpt
Linda looked at the guidebook. “It shouldn’t take too much longer. We can walk the rest of the way.”
Unfortunately, she underestimated how long it would take. Suffice to say, Linda had major blisters on her feet from Gemma’s shoes by the time they arrived at the police station. They wearily proceeded up the steps, opened the heavy doors, and walked into a large and busy foyer with all sorts of people milling around.
“Who do we talk to?” Augusta wondered.
Gemma pointed dead ahead. “Probably that important-looking guy.”
Linda took a deep breath. “Okay, repeat after me. It wasn’t our fault. It wasn’t our fault.”
“It wasn’t our fault,” they chimed as they slowly walked up to the officer who stood behind the glass partition of a huge desk that seemed to be on a platform. He looked very busy and kind of scary.
Bette whispered in Linda’s ear. “He looks mean.”
“Shhh.” Linda cleared her throat. “Excuse me, officer.”
The huge man held up his finger. He barked some orders at a clerk and then picked up the phone to bark some more orders at someone else. He finally put the phone down.
“What can I do for you ladies?”
The four of them quaked, but because her friends were looking at her, it was Linda who spoke. “We’d like to report a crime.”
He shuffled paper and wrote something down before he glanced at them again. “What kind of crime?”
Linda looked at the others. “Well, it’s rather complicated. It’s a kidnapping, mugging, sudden-death, car-theft sort of thing….”
“….not to mention breaking the speed limit….”
“….and unintended property damage….”
“…..and don’t forget the gun. The death was unexpected too, but it was self-defense.”
He looked at them for a long minute. “Is that right?”
The four of them nodded.
“Well, I’ll have you ladies sit over there on the bench and I’ll call up one of my detectives and he’ll be down shortly to talk to you. How’s that?”
“That would be fine.” Linda said. They started to walk away, and then she turned back. “Umm, do you think it will be soon? Because we have to go to Saks.”
The look he gave her shut her up. They scurried across the foyer to sit on the bench by the far wall.
“Now you’ve made him mad,” Bette said.
Linda pursed her lips. ” All right, I’m sorry.”
Augusta said, “I hope he doesn’t hold that against us.”
“You should’ve kept your mouth shut,” Gemma chimed in.
Linda gave them a filthy look. “I’m sorry, okay? These jeans are so far up my va-jay-jay, I’ve lost my ability to think!”
PRAISE FOR HIT & MRS.
“Crewe’s characters are smart, hysterically funny, engaging, and real. A natural storyteller, Crewe is at the top of the list of women writing humour and popular fiction in Canada.”
– Sheree Fitch, Author