The Dummy Case (Professor Caldwell #3) - Milton K. Ozaki

This was one of the finds from Half Price Books I was really interested in. The size of the book was unusual, and the cover was interesting.

Professor Caldwell is planning a little experiment for his psychology students. He gets his sidekick, Bendy Brinks, to set up a little demonstration down by the lake. When the police show up, they expect to find a dummy in the lake, but instead, they pull up the body of a woman.

The case has a lot of twists and turns. The professor is the Sherlock of the team, while Bendy is the somewhat amorous sidekick. The inept copper, Phelan, is present as well. Bendy was always checking out the women. Even Anita's mother was getting examined.

It was pretty obvious this wasn't the first Caldwell mystery, but I had to hunt a little more than normal to find the list. Apparently, this is the third one out of three. The author himself wrote approximately two dozen detective novels.

While Ozaki's writing style was pretty cool, I think his life might be more interesting. From what I read, he actually made a Yahtzee style dice game called Murder. The most intriguing parts were the cons he pulled. One of them was a device that was said to increase gas mileage. I think my favorite was the fraudulent mail-order college degrees from places like Colorado State Christian College and Hamilton State University.

Back to the book. It was pretty good, but Bendy was irritating. He would kiss whoever, so I felt bad for the girls, especially Wanda. In the end, the case was solved, and I enjoyed the book. I had parts of the mystery figured out but not much. Good Book!