After two months of living in stiff jeans and scratchy wool shirts, it was a welcome change to feel the bus driver’s appreciative eyes checking out her miniskirt and low-cut blouse. She took an aisle seat next to the woman snoring quietly in the third row.

Like the poet-detective featured in her first novel, Ask the Dead, published by Martin Brown, Joyce Yarrow has a hyphenated professional identity. Ms. Yarrow is a poet and fiction writer, multimedia performance artist, and singer/songwriter.