Book excerpt: Every new year carries with it the tantalizing promise of better times to come. It brings the possibility of prosperity that the old year never delivered. It arrives with hope, if only for a moment. Dorothy Lundegaard hopes that 1938 will mean more success for her and her brother and their struggling Lundegaard Investigations. At least enough success to make her a full-fledged partner in the business. But their first job in the new year presents quite a conundrum. A case of theft that the police deem not a crime. An expensive new car, a Cadillac series 65 convertible, mysteriously vanishes, then reappears just where it belonged. Clean, full of gas, but with extra miles on the odometer. But who would steal such a valuable car then return it two days later? For that matter, who would choose the coldest January night with temperatures well below zero to steal a convertible? And what if the police are only half right? It might not be theft, but there just might have been a crime. One that only the Lundegaards working together can uncover. "The Vanishing Convertible," a short story in the continuing Dorothy Lundegaard Mysteries.