To Thine Own Self Be True (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
It’s almost Christmas in Pennsylvania, which means lots of cold and snow. Stella Crown is nice and warm, enjoying a visit with Mandy and Wolf Ink. Mandy is regaling them with tales of the tattoo trade while Wolf works on a new tattoo for Stella. She’s getting an ID bracelet with Howie’s name as the focal point. When the session is interrupted, Stella falls asleep. Nobody is around when she wakes up, so she leaves, planning on returning another day.When the police show up on her doorstep, she knows that something dreadful has happened. Mandy is dead, left to freeze to death by whoever hit her upside the head. Wolf is missing, which makes him the natural suspect as far as the police are concerned. Anyone who knows Wolf doesn’t believe this. To assuage her guilt, because she left without finding Mandy in time to keep her from freezing, Stella decides to investigate. She believes, probably correctly, that she will have much better luck getting her questions answered within the tattoo sub-culture than any cop will, no matter how sympathetic. The cop working the case is very flexible for a cop; it would be nice to see more of her in future books.She gets a lot of help in her quest from Nick, a blast from her past. He’s the guy who was painting her barn and charming her socks off, two books back. That little scenario went out the window when Stella found out he was a developer, and that he had lied to her. Nick shows up in the middle of a blizzard, which means he winds up sleeping on her couch. Lots of tension all around, as one might imagine.Stella and Nick find that there is a lot she doesn’t know about Wolf and Mandy. They are far more political, at least about body art, than Stella ever dreamed. As in any sub-culture, there are good guys and bad guys; Nick and Stella meet people all along that spectrum as they try to find Wolf and prove that he didn’t kill Mandy.This is the third in the Stella Crown series. Stella is growing as a character; one would almost have to grow, considering all the ups and downs that Clemens gives her to cope with. While the plot isn’t all that challenging, the exploration of the tattoo world is fascinating and educational. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Clemens takes a woman with what would seem to be a fairly ordinary life and just writes the bejesus out of the situation. Reading about a blizzard in the middle of July wasn’t all bad, either!
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