Open Season

Open Season is a novel by Linda Howard, published in 2001. It begins on the thirty-fourth birthday of Daisy Minor, a small-town librarian who has decided that her clothes, her looks and her lack of a social life all need to change at once. She is thirty-four, and the birthday becomes the occasion for a decision she has been putting off for some time.

Daisy makes herself over into somebody who goes out, dances and flirts, and the transformation is treated as an experiment in being seen rather than as a disguise. It also puts her in places she would not otherwise have gone, which is how she comes to witness a murder and, by doing so, becomes the person the killer has to deal with.

The town's police chief, Jackson Russo, notices the change in her and is intrigued by it, and he also recognises that she is heading somewhere dangerous. The book is a suspense story run through with comedy, because the same decision that gives Daisy a life is the decision that makes her a witness.