Dixie’s biggest problem arrives in her bank statement as an overdraft of $3000, and although she loathes handling money, she heads to the Texas Citizens Bank to wrestle with them about her missing funds. While she is there, she ends up witnessing a bank robbery by a most unlikely suspect who resembles Aunt Bea. In fact, Dixie realizes she knows the gun-toting bank robber as “aunt” Edna, the next-door-neighbor of her childhood. She had grown up with her son, Marty, greedily consuming peanut butter cookies in Edna’s kitchen, going camping with the family, and even dating Marty her senior year.

Edna escapes and leads the police on a high-speed chase that concludes in her death after she shoots and wounds a police officer and they return her fire. Dixie is perplexed and saddened, while Marty is convinced that somebody must have done something to change his mother for her to act so out of character and asks Dixie to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Edna leaves a sizable estate, and Marty is amazed to learn that he will only inherit half of it as she has left the other half to her new church. Edna’s stickup is the third to have been committed by an innocent looking old lady in the last few weeks, and the second to die in a police shoot out. The news agencies are having a field day and have dubbed them The Granny Bandit Gang.

The public is outraged that the innocent looking ladies were filled with numerous police bullets and are after the Chief of Police and the Mayor’s blood. The police are up in arms after one of the officers involved in the both of the shootouts is shot in the back of the head and killed, execution-style. Dixie knows that Edna is guilty of committing a robbery and shooting at a policeman, but she grows increasingly suspicious about her reasons, so she gladly investigates.

The Chill Factor is a quick paced mystery with many interesting new characters and includes the old friends that Dixie has accumulated from her work as a D.A., such as the Mayor, a number of detectives, and lawyers. Dixie had drifted out of law, searching for a job with more meaning. Yet she wonders sometimes if she isn’t continuing it out of stubbornness after arguing about it with the only man she has seriously considered settling down with, Parker Dann. Dixie had ignored his concerns about her safety and turned down his offer to form a partnership to search for missing children. Subsequently he had moved out of Dixie’s home and left for Galveston. They remain friends, and optimistically, Parker now admits she is a paladin, unable to help wanting to be a “heroic champion- righter of wrongs- warrior against injustice” and has offered to help her with this case.

Unfortunately, the mastermind behind all the crimes is easy to discern far too early in the book, and Dixie’s inability to see what is right before her eyes until it is almost too late seems inappropriately naïve. While it is human to err, most readers enjoy a mystery where the protagonist is worthy and clever enough to unravel a complex crime. If Ms. Rogers wants to portray Dixie an intelligent person, then she must allow her to crack the case after a reasonable amount of time and after a nominal number of clues.

--Monica Pope