A MURDER MOST CAMP, cozy amateur-sleuth mystery with added queerness!

A MURDER MOST CAMP
NICOLAS DiDOMIZIO
Poisoned Pen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The Guncle meets Every Time I Go On Vacation Someone Dies in this fun, twisty mystery following a spoiled nepo baby forced to work at a struggling summer camp who stumbles into a real-life murder mystery he has no choice but to solve.

Rustic cabins. Lakefront bonfires. A painfully hot lifeguard. And a murder? Summer has never been this camp.

Mikey Hartford IV has coasted through his twenties in a distracted blur of yachts and sex and partying. But when his father discovers his latest million-dollar impulse buy and changes the terms of his trust, the party's finally over. Now, unless Mikey can make a positive contribution to the world before his thirtieth birthday—one that doesn't involve throwing cash at his problems—he'll never see another yacht again. (Or even so much as a canoe.)

Enter: Camp Lore, a struggling summer camp in upstate New York where Mikey has to work as the oldest, least-qualified staffer to prove that he can "do good" alongside his twelve-year-old aunt. (Yes, aunt.) But Mikey isn't sure he'll be able to survive the camp's ramshackle living conditions, let alone the gaggle of preteens who won't leave his side. And when his campers become obsessed with a local legend set at an abandoned cabin on the grounds, Mikey's chances of not making it through the summer become dangerously real—because it turns out there's a murder hidden beneath Camp Lore. And someone there will stop at nothing to keep it that way.

Solving a decade-old cold case will surely be enough "good" for Mikey to earn his inheritance. He just has to stay alive long enough to do it…

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My Review: What a hoot! This is one of those reads you, as a member of a group being threatened with ever-worsening life outcomes by the very government holding power over you, really, really can use right about now. I was completely prepared to roll my eyes and smile. I needed the hit of "it will be okay, smile more" energy I expected from the description.

I got that. I also got a fun mystery to solve. (Which...well...I've been readin' mysteries since 1967, hard to pull the wool over my eyes.) And a grossly overprivileged trust-fund workshy queenie-queen gets thrown into existential panic as my whipped cream topping on the sundae of this story.

I deliberately avoided using the "cherry" metaphor for reasons I hope are obvious.

What happens is kinda not the point of the story, it's what Mikey becomes in dealing...for the first time...with what happens when his woefully unprepared self is the one in charge of handling what happens. A pillow princess by avocation, Mikey is not at all accustomed to using the space in his brain around his movie trivia and his taste for hot gold-diggers for much of anything. It's "cute" in a young guy. (I don't think so, but that's conventional wisdom.) Mikey's dad isn't havin' it as a life for his soon-to-be-thirty son. Mikey gets a job as his aunt's kind-of carer. The twist is his aunt is twelve. (Go Gramps!) And the job's at a summer camp for her.

He, the laziest human imaginable, is about to be responsible for everything a camp counselor does. Without having been to camp.

*gleeful hand rubbing*

It goes like you'd expect: Poorly.Except, of course, not really. Lurching from crisis to problem to rebellion, Mikey finds the way out of leading teens by example is following his own teen passion for filmmaking. Telling people the story of a long-ago counselor who vanished without a trace and is rumored to have been murdered...his aunt's a true-crime nut, no one in the 2020s has not encountered the genre pervading our culture, and really honestly in our heartiest of hearts are any of us utterly immune to the appeal? Real people fall into awful circumstances and never receive justice because there are so many who need it and so few who know how to deliver it.

Opportunity practically uses a tactical battering ram on Mikey's door. He's now leading by example, helping his aunt find purpose, and attracting the kind of man who's more than physiologically a man...a strong, capable, grounded person with a man's anatomy.

So here's my reservation, and the lost fifth star's explanation. Jackson is a hottie with a heart. Sofar so good. He's way out of Mikey's league, but people cross those lines all the time because "the heart wants what it wants or else it doesn't care." (Bless you, Emily Dickinson!) It's the...unearned-ness...of Jackson's love for Mikey, it's the way Mikey really doesn't set out to become Jackson's man but kinda selfishly just accepts it is happening, that sticks in my craw. It's consistent and fully supported in the storyline, it's clearly how Mikey would have to receive the loving attention of a man like Jackson as a gift, but theres something off about that dynamic for me.

But that's what reviews are about, right? I'm here to say "the story worked but..." so you'll have a picture of how you think you'll respond not just what events you can expect to occur. If you want a book report ask a chatbot for one.

Only real people have opinions.

A WRETCHED FOLLY: A Regency Cozy, FOURTEENTH in Bea's series of stories

A WRETCHED FOLLY: A Regency Cozy (Beatrice Hyde-Clare #14)
LYNN MESSINA
Potatoworks Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$6.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Traveling to the ancestral Matlock estate with her husband, Beatrice, Duchess of Kesgrave, is finally able to confront her greatest the pinery. Forced to endure an endless parade of pineapple-inflected dishes early in her marriage, she has devised a scheme to sabotage the despised fruit, which she can now carry out at long last.

Good gracious, no. Bea does not really mean the plants any harm, and approaching the building on a summer morning, she is struck by how lovely it is, with its elegant portico and high arching windows. It is a shame, then, that she stumbles across a slain corpse almost immediately upon entering.

Devil it! A dead body is the last thing she wants to contend with! She’s in the country — nearly a hundred miles from London and her recent harrowing experience. Having proven to the beau monde that she is not guilty of multiple homicides, she is eager to put some distance between her and her reputation as the murder duchess. All she wants to do is enjoy some fresh air and ingratiate herself with her new staff, an effort that would not be aided by accusing the servants of lying — although they obviously are, which the constable will figure out quickly enough if he is not a dunderhead.

Oh, but maybe he is a dunderhead and maybe the drawing in the victim’s pocket actually is a treasure map to a lost viking horde and maybe the murder duchess is a little too set in her ways to allow a killer to go free — or strike again.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Duke and soon-to-be father Damien has brought his duchess Beatrice to his ancestral estate for her confinement. Haverill Hall is also the source of Bea's culinary nemesis, the pineapple, a very very expensive and trendy comestible she loathes. There are, in her thoughts at least, opportunities to create that will end the beloathèd plants from existing while looking innocent of wrongdoing in her belovèd Duke's eyes.

Be real, Bea: he'd know anyway if something destroyed his pineapples in their pinery. Plus you've got bigger fish to fry. Like, why's there a dead guy in said pinery. Like, when's this baby coming. Like, what now when the pinery turns out to be cozy and charming. Not least, like who are all these people in Haverhill?

Damien, still furious about the ton's recent treatment of the woman he adores, is not blind to Bea's character. He doesn't love her anyway, he loves her as she is. It makes Duke Damien my hero. I really need to get stories about men who love and support their partners; his silly childish endearments would irk me were they not overmatched by his fondness and demonstrable care for her. It does, however, still cause him great anxiety that his Bea is suddenly wrapped up in another murder solving, only now while she is at the point of delivering her husband's much-desired heir. It's clear this is very much the motivation for how...helpful...everyone, from Kesgrave the slightly pedantic and overintellectual Duke to the staff are to Bea as she clearly has no smallest desire to be inactive and uninvolved in the world. The wretched, boring novel she's agreed to read instead of dashing about but that can't even make her fall asleep it's so pathetic, honestly sounds very like late-pregnancy frustration and severe tedium intolerance. She's not in London, she's got a murder of someone she is not interested in that she's mostly happy to let the constable deal with until she frankly gets involved mostly to keep herself from going mad.

When the corpse's identity becomes clear, it still feels like Bea is not really invested in solving his murder, but in working through some feelings she's got left over from events in Flora's A Highly Courageous Adventure (what a family her cousin is marrying into! unlike her husband, he's chock-a-block with terrible relatives) and Verity's A Lark's Regret (apologies matter, when harm's been done however careless instead of malicious it was). It was, if I'm honest, a matter of deepest indifference to me who killed the lazy, greedy git. Still and all Ma'at must be served or there is no point in promulgating a concept of justice. I'm not salty about the absence of same in the 21st century at all, nonsense whatever might you mean.

I don't at all recommend starting here because there are spoilers for multiple books in these series of intertwined Regencies. Begin at the beginning. Get these relationship-driven crime-solving stories in their proper order so you won't slap your forehead and/or purse your lips in annoyance like I did multiple times.

I'm giving four full stars, despite my deep conviction neither Bea nor I care in the least about this jerk's murder (and I suspect we're both eager to attend Mrs. Pomphrey's wake, sour old baggage she is) because Damien, Duke of Kesgrave, and his Duchess Beatrice, are so very obviously partners in what they both treasure as a friendship. That makes me feel hopeful and happy, so is worth four stars on the strength of that alone.

THE MIDNIGHT TAXI, delightful debut cozy

THE MIDNIGHT TAXI
YOSHA GUNASEKERA
Berkley Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: When the last fare of the night turns up dead in her backseat, a Sri Lankan American taxi driver works off the clock to clear her name in this mystery novel by debut author Yosha Gunasekera.

Siriwathi Perera doesn’t quite know where she’s going in life. She never expected to be a taxicab driver in New York City, struggling to make ends meet and still living with her parents at twenty-eight. The true-crime podcasts that keep Siri company as she drives don’t do much to make up for the legal career she imagined for herself, or the brother she’s grieving.

When public defender Amaya Fernando gets into her cab, they make a quick connection through their shared Sri Lankan roots. Siri, whose social circle is limited to her grade-school best friend, Alex, thinks things might finally be looking up with this new potential friendship. But she’s suddenly dropped into her own true crime when she discovers her next passenger murdered in the backseat, and she has to call Amaya sooner than she’d expected.

Pinned as the obvious and only suspect, and desperate to clear her name, Siri chases down leads across the boroughs of New York City with Amaya’s help. But with her court date looming, they have just five days to find out who really killed the midnight passenger—or Siri’s life will be over before she can even truly live it.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The author of this ultimate expression of the locked-room mystery is an attorney with the Innocence Project. As a Sri Lankan New Yorker herself, as well as a former public defender and a lawyer practicing with the poorest citizens, her bona fides on every side of this story are established.

The facts of the case are great, designed to keep the puzzle-solving reader alert. The story, as a mystery tory, gets good marks. Siri's interest in true-crime podcasts reflecting her thwarted desire to be a lawyer. It's also, mirabile dictu, a possible key to resolving the death of her passenger...a rookie error on the author's part but honestly, it's a debut so it's forgiven. I mean, how convenient...a lot like how Siri knows fellow Sri Lankan American public defender Amaya. After the two hit it off when Amaya is a fare, who else would Siri call when the police decide they've got their killer and it's her?

Pick one of those coincidences and kill the other. It could've, even might have, happened in Real Life but fiction has different, more stringent rules. (Also as a future Bronxian I bristled just a bit at being called kind but not nice.) The charm of these women bonding over the racism they manage with humor and more generosity than I would, over their families and their quirks (and dwell on their stunningly scrummy sounding meals!), and share a sense of humor based on their very similar life experiences as South Asian women in a patriarchal racist culture. It felt...inevitable, necessary...that Siri be advised by counsel to keep quiet and then she begins popping off!

It's a gently cozy murder mystery à la the Finlay Donovan series, driven by character interactions and the kind of chemistry a series needs. Expect book two soon, or so I expect anyway. I thought the pacing, crime. discovery, clue searches, and the like was exemplary. I thought the resolution was good, giving me the sense that I *could* have figured it out (I didn't).

The case notes don't include complaints about the fun way to see NYC from an angle not remotely like my old white male one. I'm ruffled by the casual, thoughtless nastiness of some people towards anyone not like them everywhere. It hits a little harder when you see it emanating from the place you think of as home.

All in all, a pleasurable puzzle to chew over, a Valentine to the maddening, delightful NYC I have loved and lived in for decades, and a very suitable launch to a new cozy series from a new voice I hope, plan, and expect to hear more from.

ALL MY BONES, second bookseller/sleuth cozy mystery set in Georgia

ALL MY BONES (An Old Juniper Bookshop Mystery #2)
P. J. NELSON
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Madeline Brimley, new owner of a bookstore in a small Georgia town, finds herself playing sleuth when a friend is charged with the murder of a much-disliked woman.

Madeline Brimley recently inherited a bookstore in Enigma, Georgia, is embarking on her second career, after her first one (acting) founders upon the metaphorical rocks. Settling in, Madeline recruits her friend Gloria Coleman, the local Episcopal priest, to help her plant azaleas in the front yard of the old Victorian that houses the bookstore. Turning the soil, however, uncovers the body of one Beatrice Glassie, a troublesome woman who has been missing for the past six months.

When her friend Gloria is arrested for the murder, Madeline is determined to prove her innocence and, as she quickly finds out, there aren't many people in town who hadn't wanted to kill Bea Glassie at one point or another. And the very expensive and rare first edition of a particular volume of Grimm's Fairy Tales—ordered by the victim and her sister is somehow tied to the grim death. With the help of her not-quite-boyfriend, a local lawman, and her deceased aunt's best friend, Madeline plans to set a trap to catch the real murderer—before she becomes the next victim.

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My Review: BOOKED FOR MURDER is Author Nelson's debut bookseller/sleuth cozy mystery set in Georgia. Building on its very pleasant foundations, this tale of a local harpy-cum-harridan's unregretted death takes Madeline Brimley into dark corners of her newly-returned-to hometown. Her buddy Gloria, the Episcopalian priest, gets accused...not very convincingly...of the crime. Not so fast says our intrepid actress manquée-turned-bookseller, and swings into action.

I absolutely love that she used to babysit Billy, the guy now running for sheriff! I love the depth of field that is developed in this second entry in the series. Her interest in David, the local master gardener, is a relief...it's usually the lawman who gets involved with the amateur sleuth which...just no. It's an ethical violation that would get him bounced from his job and void his case investigations in reality. Of course, this isn't reality.

As in the first book the suspense-meter's staying low. I'm not against that in a cozy mystery where we're reading for ma'at and vibes. The cast is developing nicely, their quirks settling in to a rhythm of believable traits by consistency of notice from the rest of the cast. (Nothing destroys an illusion faster than no one in town ever commenting on someone's weird little quirks, eg Philomena's sapphic relationship with the late Aunt Rose.) Madeline's first-person narrative voice is a high point in this series. I looked forward to spending time with her. That failed acting career has done its part in giving Madeline crime-sleuthing skills, like seriously good sight-reading of materials she's briefly shown or sees, and decent mimicry skills.

I don't think her concentration was ever that strong...imagine needing reminding that the point of uncovering something is to exonerate her jailed friend!...but I totally bought in to the resolution of the killing being rooted in old, deep, toxic hatred. Small towns are great at breeding that kind of proximity toxicity.

A wonderful way to feed your Kindle and your head in the down moments of the slide into the Yule celebration itself. Get the first one, too, but you needn't read it first if you're a cozy fan of long standing.

A HIGHLY COURAGEOUS ADVENTURE: A Regency Cozy (Flora Hyde-Clare #2)

A HIGHLY COURAGEOUS ADVENTURE: A Regency Cozy (Flora Hyde-Clare #2)
LYNN MESSINA
Potatoworks Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$6.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Flora Hyde-Clare’s visit to her beau’s ancestral home was always going to be a disaster. Her mother’s nervous habit of rambling nonsensically, her father’s thinly veiled contempt, her own desperate desire to make a good impression on Sebastian Holcroft’s parents, and his seemingly endless parade of siblings all guaranteed that their stay in the country would be intolerably awkward at best.

Yet for all her dire misgivings, Flora never imagined one of the household servants would wind up slain in his own bed.

But that is precisely what happens to the handsome young land steward. Chock-full of bright ideas for the estate’s future, Adrian Singleton nevertheless failed to conceive the folly of dallying with an impoverished widow whom he had no intention of marrying. Tired of his lies, his lover strangles him to death with her scarf—her very stylish scarf.

That is the story everyone believes—except Flora, who simply cannot fathom how a poor woman buried in the country would get her hands on a scarf in the first stare of fashion. The lovely accessory has to belong to a lady of means, and although she knows investigating Holcroft’s sisters for murder is a surefire way to end their relationship, she simply cannot smother her suspicions. She has to poke around until she finds out which one is the culprit.
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My Review: Flora (cousin of the Duchess of Kesgrave from Author Messina's related series) returns to delight us with her shrewd, witty observations...this time she's really in the muck with Sebastian, her beloved, throwing her to the piggy, pursey-mouthed swine he's related to. It's a wise move on his part, since she can never claim that she was blindsided by how perfectly ghastly and terrible his (large!) family is...snobbish, unkind, small-minded, ungrateful people, so one wonders where the heck he came from. He doesn't tell her this, leaving her to think he wants his family to approve of her...and that leads her to make more efforts to be kind than I thought she should have made! Sebastian's truly terrible father, and one of his sisters, think quite poorly of Flora despite her being cousin of a duchess...because they imagine her to be a spy. (To be fair, there's a reason for that...her behavior's odd.)

What makes the read fun is the way Author Messina lets us in on Flora's thoughts, those sensible and focused as well as those anxious and silly. I think her fondness for Sebastian is drawn with enough detail to convince all but the most cynical that she's genuinely his friend, and he hers. It's a lovely read, and the murder...despite the fact I do not enjoy murder victims being characters who really just need killin'...is handled with the aplomb of an experienced craft worker in the field.

Good fun to be had if you need some cozy escape time from modern reality.

DEATH AT THE DOOR (Ruby and Cordelia Mysteries #2), just plain ol' fun!

DEATH AT THE DOOR (Ruby and Cordelia Mysteries #2)
OLIVIA BLACKE
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, preorder for delivery tomorrow

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: The odd couple of crime-solving returns in Olivia Blacke’s Death at the Door, where a ghost and her living roommate find another mystery on their doorstep.

Ruby Young is slowly adjusting to her new life in Boston. A big part of that is her unexpected roommate—the ghost of the woman who lived there before. For Cordelia Graves, she may no longer be breathing, but it’s still her apartment and Ruby is the somewhat unwanted houseguest. They’re both happy they’ve managed to become friends, which is a miracle considering they struggle to communicate with each other. Cordelia even set Ruby up with her old job.

When Ruby discovers the body of a delivery guy at work, the new life she’s been building hangs in the balance. The last time Cordelia dragged Ruby into a murder investigation, it was almost two ghosts living in the apartment, not one. Determined to protect Ruby, Cordelia tries to shield her from the investigation, but Ruby has other ideas. It will take both of them working together to navigate the fine line between the dead and the living to bring a killer to light.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I read the first one last #Deathtober and was amused and entertained. When this one swam past me, I gill-netted it for an amusing afternoon's reading.

Ghost partners make crime solving funny. How Ruby, a pretty naïve "breather" in the first place tries to explain how she knows things she shouldn't is kind of funny but often devolves into absurdity. Cordelia's taken the child under her, um, wing shall we say so keeps trying to get her up to Cordelia's speed. It's not going great, it does sometimes grate on my nerve, but really...don't pick up a comedy cozy and expect to solve a fair-play puzzle.

Ruby as comic relief seems too un-self aware to get away with the gag for another book. Holmes' Watson got the fact that Holmes was talking down to him. It doesn't feel to me like Ruby's got that in regard to her striking off on her own during the part of the investigation into Marty the dead guy's last hours...Cordelia's got a different idea, conveyed by their usual Etch-A-Sketch avenue of communication (one of the main reasons I come back, honestly, it just tickles me so hard!) and, as Ruby's learning, Cordelia will just up and leave if she's pissed off and "there's nothing worse than being ghosted by an actual ghost."

Don't put Denise Mina-level expectations on the story, stay light of accusatory-finger, twiddle your Etch-A-Sketch softly and this is fun. It's silly, it doesn't take it's premise either seriously enough to make it embarrassing or so condescendingly it's irritating...finding a pitch and singing in it is a rare enough gift it should be celebrated.

I needed chuckles and a grin or two. I'm really happy that I got them here. (Please...stop telling me breathers can't hear ghosts' chats. I got it.)

ELLE COSIMANO'S PAGE: Finlay Donovan series 1 through 3

FINLAY DONOVAN IS KILLING IT (Finlay Donovan #1)
ELLE COSIMANO
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: "Getting the job done" for one single mom takes on a whole new meaning in Finlay Donovan is Killing It.

Finlay Donovan is killing it . . . except, she’s really not. She’s a stressed-out single-mom of two and struggling novelist, Finlay’s life is in chaos: the new book she promised her literary agent isn’t written, her ex-husband fired the nanny without telling her, and this morning she had to send her four-year-old to school with hair duct-taped to her head after an incident with scissors.

When Finlay is overheard discussing the plot of her new suspense novel with her agent over lunch, she’s mistaken for a contract killer, and inadvertently accepts an offer to dispose of a problem husband in order to make ends meet . . . Soon, Finlay discovers that crime in real life is a lot more difficult than its fictional counterpart, as she becomes tangled in a real-life murder investigation.

Fast-paced, deliciously witty, and wholeheartedly authentic in depicting the frustrations and triumphs of motherhood in all its messiness, hilarity, and heartfelt moment, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It is the first in a brilliant new series from YA Edgar Award nominee Elle Cosimano.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: As part of a relaunch of the series, or so I've assumed, I got the entire series to date from Minotaur Books. I binged them. It's not far from the truth to say I mainlined them. I badly needed to laugh, and feel as though the shreds of my happy mind could indeed be brought back into contact with each other. That is what reading Finlay Donovan's absurd, impossible antics did for me. Please, dear Thalia, Muse of Comedy that you are, conspire with Calliope of the eloquence brief to get these stories onto a small screen near me!

The pleasures of absurd, impossible situations like a mystery writer on deadline becoming a contract killer are many. Subversion of the rational order of things, the permanent disposal of rotten-souled people who badly need killin', the sheer red-in-tooth-and-claw joy of imposing your own will on an otherwise uncooperative and indifferent cosmos...all are present.

That the perpetratrix is also a mom, a caregiver, an ex-wife with a grudge, means we have before us an exemplar of (pardon my Freud) someone in control of her id in a time where that is not on public display. It is good to be reminded this is, in fact, a desirable thing. So my happy gauge is pegged out after this read. Even better is knowing enough of y'all agree about the happy-making qualities of the read to turn it into an ongoing series! I mean, starting off with a Jane Austen-inspired sentence like: "It is a widely known fact that most moms are ready to kill someone by eight thirty A.M. on any given morning" is gutsy and clever and a gauntlet thrown for your readerly attention.

The alchemy of a cozy series mystery is not, ironically, mysterious: the sleuth must be an amateur; must be within suspension of disbelief as one who knows about crime, usually murder; must have some scoobygroup of supporters and another pride of predatory enemies, usually exes and/or officious bureaucrats; should have a complicated love life or be starting over, falling for a cop or other law-adjacent source; have some figleaf profession that makes this outsider believably (if you squint) able to ask people questions. From there it's a free-for-all. Probably the most consistent downfall of a series is the sidekick, either not interesting or absent entirely or something else that makes one bored with the relationship. No danger of that in Vero! As sidekicks go, she's perfect: Finlay's awful ex-husband hates her, she's great with Finlay's kids (as a nanny I should hope so), and cracks wise with the best screwball-comedy heroines. Vero also asks questions that make sense for her character to ask as well as move the plot forward. That, my olds, is a whole lot harder to do, and rarer to see as a result, than you realize. Vero is the secret sauce on this double-meat, double-cheese, burger of a read.

The ending, while definitely supported by the story, didn't wow me. I had to dock a half-star in spite of the pain it caused me.

I know a lot of us need distraction from *gestures* everything. Here is a solid, enjoyable, engaging distraction that won't leave you sour or unsatisfied.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

FINLAY DONOVAN KNOCKS 'EM DEAD (Finlay Donovan #2)
ELLE COSIMANO
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From Edgar-Award nominee Elle Cosimano, comes Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead―the hilarious and heart-pounding follow-up to Finlay Donovan is Killing It.

Finlay Donovan is―once again―struggling to finish her next novel and keep her head above water as a single mother of two. On the bright side, she has her live-in nanny and confidant Vero to rely on, and the only dead body she's dealt with lately is that of her daughter's pet goldfish.

On the not-so-bright side, someone out there wants her ex-husband, Steven, out of the picture. Permanently. Whatever else Steven may be, he's a good father, but saving him will send her down a rabbit hole of hit-women disguised as soccer moms, and a little bit more involvement with the Russian mob than she'd like.

Meanwhile, Vero's keeping secrets, and Detective Nick Anthony seems determined to get back into her life. He may be a hot cop, but Finlay's first priority is preventing her family from sleeping with the fishes... and if that means bending a few laws then so be it.

With her next book's deadline looming and an ex-husband to keep alive, Finlay is quickly coming to the end of her rope. She can only hope there isn't a noose at the end of it...

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm sad to do this, but the idea that a cheating, lying sack of shit is a "good father" is too big a leap for me...no way does this story get past four stars. A father is an example of how to be, or what to want in, a man to his children. The example Steven the scumbag sets is terrible, his behavior to Finlay and, not coincidentally, Vero is misogynistic and patronizing, so no way in hell do I think Finlay's Stockholm syndrome-based protection of him from being the subject of a hit is necessarily good. It's morally correct, of course, saving a human life is always that, but...some people just need killin' and he is one.

It stinks to believe human lives should be saved even when they're scumbags. But here we are.

How Finlay and Vero go about this self-appointed task, the people they hate dealing with but who are central to their intended result, and the emergence of Finlay's acerbic, tart-tongued mom, Susan, into the scoobygroup, made this a read I enjoyed...more mutedly...than the first one. Susan is the only possible mother for Finlay, her mode of relating to the world absolutely explains the way her daughter became the woman she is...such a treat to learn, since I like the daughter so much.

Oh, and for the completist readers, y'all's fetishistic "start-with-#1" behavior is completely and utterly the only way to go in this series. A lot would make sense, but not hit the right notes, without the background established in Finlay Donovan is Killing It. Truly this is a series, first and foremost.

There's the required "romance" with, in this book, two unrealistically perfect guys...cop and aspiring lawyer...vying for her attention. Color me unimpressed.

Resolving the threat to Steven, much as I disagree that it's actually truly necessary, does take some turns, deliver some surprisingly unknown dirt, and end in a way that's totally condign. It is, like reality itself, a little less than utterly satisfying...Steven isn't rescued from being eaten by sharks only to fall into a lion's mouth, dammit...but a whole lotta laughs, witty banter, sassy crosstalk, and fun.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

FINLAY DONOVAN JUMPS THE GUN (Finlay Donovan #3)
ELLE COSIMANO
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From USA Today bestseller and Edgar-Award nominee Elle Cosimano, comes Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun—the highly anticipated, hilarious, and heart-pounding next installment in the beloved Finlay Donovan series…

Author and single mom Finlay Donovan has been in messes before―after all, she's a pro at removing bloodstains for various unexpected reasons―but none quite like this. When Finlay and her nanny/partner-in-crime Vero accidentally destroyed a luxury car that they had "borrowed" in the process of saving the life of Finlay's ex-husband, the Russian mob did her a favor and bought the car for her. And now Finlay owes them.

Mob boss Feliks is still running the show from behind bars, and he has a task for Finlay: find and identify a contract killer before the cops do. The problem is, the killer might be an officer themself.

Luckily, hot cop Nick has just been tasked with starting up a citizen's police academy, and combined pressure from Finlay's looming book deadline and Feliks is enough to convince Finlay and Vero to get involved. Through firearm training and forensic classes (and some hands-on research with a tempting detective), Finlay and Vero use their time in police academy to sleuth out the real contract killer to free themselves from the mob's clutches―all the while dodging spies, confronting Vero's past, and juggling the daily trials of parenthood.

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My Review: When the Russian mob does you a favor, you better know the repayment's gonna be steep.

Like "find a hitman we can't find ourselves" steep.

Of course this is silly, like the people in the killing for profit industry...and specific market-segment leaders...couldn't do this in their collective sleep. You shouldn't read these expecting real-life scenarios (or out of order!) and anyone who does: "Welcome to Earth! I am the Leader, will gladly accept bribes for favors."

Off to hot-cop Nick's well-timed, brand new citizen's cop school go Vero and Finlay. As you'd expect, there's a lot of raillery and badinage; there's a lot of hectic running around; and the mystery, when solved, makes sense and makes it clear we'll have still more adventures ahead. Vero's past is coming to light a bit more. Finlay seems to be inching towards making an emotional commitment to Nick, poor Julian the student-lawyer is fading...for now. The kids are, realistically, being handfuls for Vero the nominal nanny (but really co-parent with Finlay by now) and their mom to ride herd on. Steven the nasty ex-husband is nasty. Mrs. Haggerty, the nosy neighbor, is still clueless and curious and pushy.

If you're on the fence about diving in, get the relationship dynamic clear: These women are the Lucy-and-Ethel of the 2020s. They egg each other on. They get each other's jokes. They have each other's backs. They've got men, but none matter as much as each does to the other. It's a series that centers them, centers their wild and woolly ride through a fantasy universe where there's no statistical crime mapping, no Child Protective Services, no hint of any of the real-world crap we all want to escape from.

So do it with Finlay and Vero, and get them to ease some stress off your shoulders as they set the world to rights for you.

MICHELLE CHOUINARD'S PAGE: The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco series

THE SERIAL KILLER GUIDE TO SAN FRANCISCO (The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco #1)
MICHELLE CHOUINARD
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In Michelle Chouinard’s clever mystery The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco, the granddaughter of a serial killer shows readers another side of the beloved city.

Welcome to San Francisco, a city with killer charm.

The chill of a San Francisco summer can be deadly. No one knows this better than Capri Sanzio, who makes her living giving serial killer tours of the city. Capri has been interested in the topic since she was a kid, when she discovered she’s the granddaughter of serial killer William ‘Overkill Bill’ Sanzio. She’s always believed in his innocence, though she's never taken the leap to fully dive into the case.

But now an Overkill Bill copycat has struck in San Francisco. And Capri’s former mother-in-law, Sylvia, just cut off Capri’s daughter’s tuition payments. Needing cash, Capri wonders if this is the time to exonerate her grandfather. The case is back in the news and the police will be looking to understand the past to catch a present-day killer. Capri could finally uncover the truth about Overkill Bill—documenting the process with a podcast and a book—and hopefully earn some money.

Before Capri can get very far, the cops discover the copycat’s latest Sylvia. Capri soon finds herself at the heart of the police’s investigation for an entirely different reason. She and her daughter are prime suspects.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Weird premise...descendant of serial killer makes living talking about serial killers despite feeling ancestor was innocent...but played for laughs. Shouldn't work, should it?

It does. Mostly because the serial-killing part is discussed, without strong gore emphasis and in the context of Capri's tours. It still feels...weird. But the way the premise leads to Capri herself being a suspect in a copycat killing is very apt, logical, and still not really expected.

What very much is expected is Capri's love interest in Detective Petito, and blessèdly not Ryan (a tech whiz and co-runner of her tour company). I am really tired of this trope. At least freshen it up, make Petito into Louisa, SOMEthing other than another tedious obligatory heteronormative "romance" grafted onto a story to tick a box.

I admit I was amused that the victim whose fate twigged the cops to Capri was her ex-mother-in-law, who had just cut off financial support for Capri's daughter's education. Nice touch, Author Chouinard. What wore on me a bit was the nature of detail I was presented with...I am uninterested in who made or sold more accurately your leather goods, for example...in an abundance I found tiresome. I did enjoy the San Francisco setting mostly because it was well integrated into the plot and not smashing into me in a deluge of verbiage.

Speaking of San Francisco, as the haunt of tech and thus finance bros, there is significant tech-talk. Again, it's there because it's germane to the crimes and to their solution, it's not inaccurate to my limited understanding...though I'm very certain some of the actions taken are illegal and would get their perpetrator sanctioned, fired, and/or prosecuted, not to mention being inadmissible in a court...so I rolled with it. You may not wish to be tech-talked to, so be aware it's there.

The copycat's identity is consistent with all the clues and the nature of the crimes committed. The mystery resolves in a way I found satisfying, and left room for Capri's return. All in all a read I liked, a series I'll read more of, and if anyone knows a development exec at Hallmark, this series would do good business for their channel in Octobers for years to come.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A TOUR TO DIE FOR (The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco #2)
MICHELLE CHOUINARD
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In Michelle Chouinard’s A Tour to Die For, Capri Sanzio is back, giving a true crime tour her guests won’t soon forget. After all, a tour guide who specializes in serial killers knows better than most that San Francisco is a city with killer charm.

Capri Sanzio knows that when you give serial killer walking tours for a living, unexpected situations are more common than San Francisco's famous fog. So, when one of her guests claims to see a woman being attacked during a tour, Capri remains unfazed. The police search the apartment in question and find no evidence of anything amiss, so they chalk it up to a false report from a true crime fanatic looking to be a part of a case. And Capri thinks they might be right, since lately her tours have been attracting even more obsessives than usual—as it turns out, finding the actual serial killer who committed the "Overkill Bill" murders didn't stop the constant questions about her grandfather's supposed crimes, it only intensified them.

But Capri would never forgive herself if someone is in trouble and she walks away. Plus, something about the whole situation has every one of Capri's investigative journalist instincts going haywire—why would someone lie about seeing an attack? So Capri starts to dig, and when her questions lead to a body, she finds herself at the center of another murder investigation.

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My Review: Building directly on the resolution of the first story in the series, we meet Capri as she's about to go on a date with Detective Petito, who piqued her interest most saucily and expectedly...but they really can't go out during a case they're both involved, now can they. So now they're not in that situation, all clear, right?

Wrong. Quelle surprise. Capri's riding high on the back of the first case's notoriety...proving she's not guilty of murdering her slimy ex-husband's mother out of spite is hardly a spoiler, it's a mystery series not Roger Ackroyd redux...and her serial-killer tours of her belovèd San Francisco are booming. Maybe too much so, as one of her tourists insists a murder took place in an apartment near the tour's route. Is an overzealous, eager-to-be-a-witness imagination at work? The police respond to the scene, find nothing, and assume that's the case.

Not so much Capri. She does not dismiss the concern, something's up...so investigation mode activates and off we go. And off goes that date with Detective Petito, of course.

Shenanigans ensue, the scoobygroup works their way through the clues, and the ending is satisfyingly apt. I don't think the second bite of the apple is as fun as the first because the novelty's worn off, I do not care for—or about—the romance, and the scumbaggery of Capri's ex around his late mother's palatial home honestly feels shoehorned in to me.

Will I read the next one? I won't say no, and I'm not counting the days, either.

THE MARIGOLD COTTAGES MURDER COLLECTIVE...nope

THE MARIGOLD COTTAGES MURDER COLLECTIVE
JO NICHOLS
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The perfect summer read, full of charm and heart, written in the vein of The Thursday Murder Club or Only Murders in the Building but with a southern California twist.

Mrs. B, the landlady of The Marigold Cottages is a stubborn idealist who only rents to people she cares about: Sophie, an anxious young playwright with a dark past; Hamilton, an agoraphobe who likes to overshare; Ocean, a queer sculptor raising two kids alone; the perfectionist Lily-Ann; and Nicholas, a finance bro who’s hiding secrets.

The tenants live contentedly in their doll-house bungalows in Santa Barbara, just minutes from the beach, until their peace is shattered when Anthony, a quiet, hulking, but potentially violent ex-con moves in. Three weeks later, a dead body is discovered on the streets of the peaceful neighborhood. Anthony is arrested, and the tenants heave sighs of relief. Until Mrs. B, convinced that he's innocent, marches down to the police station and confesses to the crime herself. The tenants band together and form “The Marigold Cottages Murder Collective” to save their beloved landlady. As clues are unearthed and secrets are revealed, the community of misfits only grows more tight-knit...until a second body is found. Full of eccentricity, humor, community, The Marigold Cottages Murder Collective will keep you hooked until the last page.

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My Review: Mrs. B might care about these people; I didn't. (Didn't care about her, either; kept thinking Mrs. Madrigal had had ECT.)

Ocean was tolerable; Sophie was not; Anthony...what was that about? Like asking a casting director to write you a TV pilot or giving the cinematographer control over the budget, this felt like what happens when there are people deciding things outside their skill set. Much like finance-bro Nicholas, who was hiding secrets I don't remember because I didn't care before or after I knew them.

I give it stars for being seriously lacking in the usual copaganda vibes in cozy mysteries. The police aren't bumbling boobs or mustachio-twirling villains; they're creepy because they are the hulls left after Conformity and Capitalism bash idealism into sludgy slop. They're not solving the real crimes but enforcing Order.

Refreshingly, even bracingly, honest.

PoVs come and go, which will become a trope if this turns into a series. I've already said I didn't like the characters so it wasn't like the tonal shifts took me out of the one character I didn't like's PoV but rather bounced me from insufferable Artiste to dull mom to cipher. I suspect others will feel differently. I see star ratings I simply can't imagine the basis for all over Netgalley and Goodreads.

Like those Osman and Backman and Robinson books, once was enough. Y'all keep lappin' it up; I'll be trawling for something that's not this in the bookstores.

MRS. CHRISTIE AT THE MYSTERY GUILD LIBRARY (Mrs. Christie #1), new cozy-mystery series with literary ghost-sleuth

MRS. CHRISTIE AT THE MYSTERY GUILD LIBRARY (Mrs. Christie #1)
AMANDA CHAPMAN
Berkley Books /Berkley Prime Crime (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Book conservator Tory Van Dyne and a woman claiming to be Agatha Christie on holiday from the Great Beyond join forces to catch a killer in this spirited mystery from Amanda Chapman.

Tory Van Dyne is the most down-to-earth member of a decidedly eccentric old-money New York family. For one thing, as book conservator at Manhattan’s Mystery Guild Library, she actually has a job. Plus, she’s left up-town society behind for a quiet life downtown. So she’s not thrilled when she discovers a woman in the library’s Christie Room who calmly introduces herself as Agatha Christie, politely requests a cocktail and announces she’s there to help solve a murder—that has not yet happened.

But as soon as Tory determines that this is just a fairly nutty Christie fangirl, her socialite/actress cousin Nicola gets caught up in the suspicious death of her less-than-lovable talent agent. Nic, as always, looks to Tory for help. Tory, in turn, looks to Mrs. Christie. The woman, whoever or whatever she is, clearly knows her stuff when it comes to crime.

Aided by a found family of unlikely sleuths—including a snarky librarian, an eleven-year-old computer whiz, and an NYPD detective with terrible taste in suits—Tory and the woman claiming to be her very much deceased literary idol begin to unravel the twists and turns of a murderer’s devious mind. Because, in the immortal words of Miss Jane Marple, “murder is never simple.”

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My Review: Need a puzzle to solve to see summer out? Something with just enough unreality to feel low-stakes and just enough emotional reality to make investing in it worth your time?

Berkley Books' Prime Crime imprint gotcha covered with Amanda Chapman's first offering.

I expected to be politely dismissive of this first in a proposed series by Amy Pershing's alter ego. I haven't read her other cozy series. I don't think I will because there's cozy, then there's so cozy you can't breathe, like an oppressively crowded Victorian living room. That's Cape Cod to me, where her other series is set.

I'll take Manhattan.

It's fun to find the call-outs to Christie's works scattered around, and it's fun...to my surprise...to have Dame Agatha just appear out of nowhere to work with Tory on solving what they know is a murder but are having trouble convincing others has that feel to it. For that matter how Tory becomes convinced that Dame Agatha is who she says she is gets handled the same way: tough and disbelieving attitude at first, then it just is part of reality in the story. In my own experience that's exactly how the unthinkable, the unbelievable, gets trojan-horsed into becoming the way things are. It's very much helped along in this narrative by the fact that Dame Agatha is only seen inside the library setting, not out wandering the Village.

It did not escape my notice that the first-person narrator, Tory, has the unbelievably cush life she has because she's a nepo baby. It's not really made much of, just presented as fact. There's no real pushback, but the situation isn't set up to draw attention to itself...Tory's a woman with a life and a style not available without lucky draws in the birth lottery.

That's all so very cozy as a backdrop. It is meant to offer the reader maximum comfort as rents in the fabric of society get repaired and ma'at is restored as it must be in a series mystery. A concern I felt going in was that the Christie-facing bits would really *require* the reader to know already what that particular story referred to was about, or the reference would fall flat; not at all the case. I found the varying levels of familiarity with Dame Agatha's works never impacted my understanding of the plot in any negative way. It offered a frisson of fun when I got it, but nothing was lost when /i didn't see the story connection for myself because that was dealt with in dialogue.

Tory, as the main character and the first-person narrator, will of necessity need to appeal to you for the read to work.

Later, when I'd had a chance to process our little encounter, I realized it made a kind of weird sense that if my guest was indeed Agatha Christie (which I did not believe for a minute), and if she had indeed decided to visit New York City some fifty years after she'd been airlifted to the Great Beyond (which I also did not believe for a minute), she might indeed choose New York's Mystery Guild Library as a home base.

Not quite the first words in the book, but darn close. This is what you're getting, so if you don't like it already, then horseman, pass by.

Me, I'm all in. And the next one, too. Fair enough play, a fun narrative voice, a premise silly enough to make me smile but never played for laughs at anyone...if only I'd liked the love interest I'd be raving!

FISHING FOR THE LITTLE PIKE, Finnish language translation of folk/cozy horror-tinged fantasy murder mystery...no, really

FISHING FOR THE LITTLE PIKE
JUHANI KARILA (tr. Lola Rogers)
Restless Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In the utterly original, genre-defying, English-language debut of Finnish author Juhani Karila, a young woman’s annual pilgrimage to her home in Lapland to catch an elusive pike in three days is complicated by a host of mythical creatures, a murder detective hot on her trail, and a deadly curse hanging over her head.

When Elina makes her annual summer pilgrimage to her remote family farm in Lapland, she has three days to catch the pike in a local pond or she and the love of her life will both die. This year her task is made more difficult by the intervention of a host of deadly supernatural creatures and a murder detective on her tail.

Can Elina catch the pike and put to rest the curse that has been hanging over her head since a youthful love affair turned sour? Can Sergeant Janatuinen make it back to civilization in one piece? And just why is Lapland in summer so weird?

Fishing for the Little Pike is an audacious, genre-defying blend of fantasy, folk tale, and nature writing.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm endlessly absorbed in stories about the Arctic, and learning to be so about stories in the Sámi culture. The more I learn about these complex interrelationships, and the fascinating people and cultures they produce, the more acutely aware of climate change's personal costs I grow.

At no time was I sure what was going on. That's by the author's design. Is the mythic world of the Sámi real? I mean on the consensus-reality scale, none of what happens ought to happen; so is the Sámi model of reality real? It is to Elina, and the consensus-reality world of the story's framing device can't account for the stranger events, so....

It's just delightful to be in that "no, that thing can not exist but she's...omigawd, what?!" head when there's a police detective from the consensus-reality world as flummoxed as we are, as stymied as possible in the execution of an apprehension, and just as bewildered as we are. The people of Vuopio don't hesitate to gossip around her, like the time the mayor, well...her consensus-reality mind doesn't accept that.

The nature writing in this story is evocative enough to make me feel summer sunburnt and skeeter-bit, colorful enough to fit seamlessly around the frankly disturbing delineation of Sámi supernatural entities, and the gestalt becomes as immersive as The Man Who Spoke Snakish. I'm charmed, I'm unnerved, I've laughed, I've stressed my limbic system into believing I've Seen Things.

Slabber Olli told her about the places he had been. He had been to the bottom of the sea and wandered endless gardens of stars in outer space. He said that human time as we know it was over. That the waters would rise and then fall, and then fiery waters would come. The Earth would be reshaped into something new. Mud would flow. Boiling canyons would open up.

"The mountains are already starting to move,” Slabber Olli said.

He told her about creatures that used to live in the sea, like reptiles with two mouths, a horizontal one and a vertical one. He told her about creatures at the bottom of the sea shaped like elm leaves, with five eyes and long, bendy elephant trunks and scissors on their heads.

About sharks with anvils growing on their backs. Flightless birds three meters tall that ran after deer on graceful, muscular legs that bent and stretched, bent and stretched, their beaks opened wide. He told her about the rockets people would build to shoot themselves off to other planets, and how badly it would turn out. Humans would continue their journey. They would find doors to knock on and portals that wouldn't open when they knocked, and the humans would break them down, and the ones they couldn't break they would build keys for. And all the while, humans would be changing. Humans would be changed not just by time but by humans themselves, and before long you'd have to call them human derivatives, and then something else entirely. In the end, it was just matter rearranging itself over and over. What was the Earth? Nothing more than an entrance hall where humanity had once briefly waited.

The consensus-reality world doesn't knowingly or willingly contain these things. Elina, in her calm way, accepts this deluge of weirdness, and then goes on about being in Lapland to prevent a curse from activating and ruining her life.

After all, why else are there raskels, or frakuses, or that bloody murderous knacky who's trapped her into the highest-imaginable stakes card game? And was the mayor of her hometown really...disappeared...by a wraith? The consensus-reality detective, who just wants to bring Elina in for questioning as there's reason to believe she's, um, involved in a murder, certainly thinks so. The villagers say so, too. (The wraith thing not the murder, although....)

I'd give this truly wacky, fun, off-kilter setting all five stars alone. I can't get that high because Elina's curse is unsatisfyingly acquired and self-perpetuated. She's taken it on to process a set of guilts that do not properly belong to her. I'm down for the fantasy aspects of the story but I draw the line at emotionally self-sabotaging women.

I'm as close to all five stars as that grunt of dissatisfaction will allow me to get. I'll read anything Author Juhani Karila writes that's translated, though, because I had a fine old time with this story.

ONE DEATH AT A TIME is fun and often enough funny...about alcoholism, fame, and growing up

ONE DEATH AT A TIME
ABBI WAXMAN
Berkley Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$10.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A cranky former actress teams up with her Gen Z sobriety sponsor to solve the murder that threatens to send her back to prison in this dazzling new mystery novel from the USA Today bestselling author of The Bookish Life of Nina Hill.

When Julia Mann, a bad-tempered ex-actress and professional thorn in the side of authority, runs into Natasha Mason at an AA meeting, it’s anything but a meet-cute. Julia just found a dead body in her swimming pool, and the cops say she did it (she already went to jail for murder once, so now they think she’s making a habit of it). Mason is eager to clear Julia’s name and help keep her sober, but all Julia wants is for Mason to leave her alone.

As their investigation ranges from the Hollywood Hills to the world of burlesque to the country clubs of Palm Springs, this unconventional team realizes their shared love of sarcasm and poor life choices are proving to be a powerful combination. Will secrets from their past trip them up, or will their team of showgirls, cat burglars, and Hollywood agents help them stay one step ahead? Are dead piranhas, false noses, and a giant martini glass important clues or simply your typical day in Los Angeles? And will they manage to solve the crime before they kill each other, or worse, fall off the wagon? Trying to keep it simple and take it easy is one thing—trying to find a murderer before they kill again is a whole other program.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Fun, funny buddy comedy set on the outskirts of that glam hotspot, Hollywood's movie industry. There's bad behavior from entitled jerks, there's a high-speed golf cart chase, there's a distinctly sapphic undertone to the leads' chemistry...there's a lot to enjoy, in other words.

Youthful impulsivity (Natasha quitting law school was the kind of stupid thing I'd've yelled at her for) and the darker side of alcohol abuse (blackouts are not new to Julia) are facets of this story. Adjusting to aging, launching a career, re-launching a career...all bantered over and really dealt with as Natasha and Julia are traipsing from pillar to post to figure out how the hell Tony, Julia's nasty ex-lover, ended up dead in her pool. Most of all, though, I was there to see how Julia would stay sober in a super high-stress world like moviemaking. Author Waxman dealt with Julia's very new sobriety and the underknown challenges the sobriety seeker faces staying on the wagon (low blood sugar is one of the most common traps for the unwary) honestly and forthrightly without didacticism.

This contrasts to the, um, shall we say heightened, tone and nature of the crime these women are united to solve. Everything about it is absurd. It's meant to be. This is the movie industry we're skewering. I'm not inclined to seek out these areas of comedy that often. I'm glad I did this time because, well, I needed a laugh that was more substantial than a romcom, had service to Ma'at and the Rightness of the world, and felt grounded enough in reality...you do not get more real that seeking sobriety...to give me a place to stand while I was craning my neck to follow the story's breakneck action.

I'm not even whelmed, still less overwhelmed, by the storytelling voice. It felt...flat...to me because it tried so hard. I'm a tough room, especially for comedy, because it is so difficult to convince me you mean it when you're being funny. This story fell only slightly short in my eyes, largely due to Natasha's dramatic unsuitability to the role of sponsor. Not that Julia would ever be someone to take real advantage of that relationship. She's not really built to listen to critique, only to hear criticism. Many an actor falls into that habit of hearing.

All that said, I'm impressed by the story's honest and unusually detailed dealings with alcohol addiction. I give it four stars for that, and for managing to make even cynical old mystery reader me pay attention to the sleuths' frenetic chasing after fairly obvious clues.

Author Waxman will get more of my dwindling supply of eyeblinks in future.

THE LIBRARY GAME, bookish cozy mystery among a pack of good friends

THE LIBRARY GAME
GIGI PANDIAN
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In The Library Game, Tempest Raj and Secret Staircase Construction are renovating a classic detective fiction library that just got its first real-life mystery.

Tempest Raj couldn’t be happier that the family business, Secret Staircase Construction, is finally getting the recognition it deserves. Known for enchanting architectural features like sliding bookshelves and secret passageways, the company is now taking on a dream project: transforming a home into a public library that celebrates history's greatest fictional detectives.

Though the work is far from done, Gray House Library’s new owner is eager to host a murder mystery dinner and literary themed escape room. But when a rehearsal ends with an actor murdered and the body vanishes, Tempest is witness to a seemingly impossible crime. Fueled by her grandfather’s Scottish and Indian meals, Tempest and the rest of the crew must figure out who is making beloved classic mystery plots come to life in a deadly game.

Multiple award winning author Gigi Pandian masterfully weaves wit and warmth in the Secret Staircase Mysteries. Readers will delight in the surprises Secret Staircase Construction uncovers behind the next locked door.

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My Review: As someone for whom this:

...represents the apotheosis of all my life's desires, this book and series could be written solely for me. Add in Tempest's history as an illusionist of renown on the stages of Las Vegas, and I'm deeper into infatuation.

As this entry in the series is not set in the same place, or with the same precise cast, as previous ones (which I have not read), and I'm at the proper starting place, though it must be said that there are a lot of relationships that aren't formed in this book. Be prepared to infer a lot from the offhanded remarks of the cast if you're starting here, but it's really not onerous. The story Author Pandian tells us here is a very cozy one...you know, dead bodies and suchlike goins-on, but no gore and precious little that could even be considered violence in the world we live in...and a murder whose most chilling aspect is how it ties in to a bookish social community's attempts to fix up a person's home library for a destination vacation spot, plus lots of good food descriptions and a recipe or two— however can I resist?

Small things detract from perfection, like the way Tempest jumps to an absolutely wrong conclusion at one point and it's simply never dealt with, but we're not here for the locked-room puzzle. This is a relationship-driven book, one with kind, good people who really care for each other and for books and food and community. The reveal of the guilty party came as no surprise to me, experienced mystery reader that I am, mostly because I knew none of the people involved and was thus not distracted by the intended red herrings.

The presence of pet bunny Abracadabra, and a pivotal character called Mrs. Hudson, made this feel very Golden-Age mystery. While I think it's lots of fun to read, I don't see myself getting books one through three to catch up. The issue with cozies for me is I need some kind of alchemical falling-in-love moment or they become rather like TV shows. I felt here as though I could easily watch this crew doing their thing on Acorn or Britbox and love it. On the page I liked it fine, but not quite enough to get to four stars.

BOOKED FOR MURDER, debut bookseller/sleuth cozy mystery set in Georgia

BOOKED FOR MURDER
P.J. NELSON
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this atmospheric southern cozy debut, Madeline Brimley returns to the bookstore she inherited, discovering that small towns hold deadly secrets.

Madeline Brimley left small town Georgia many years ago to go to college and pursue her dreams on the stage. Her dramatic escapades are many but success has eluded her, leaving her at loose ends. But then she gets word that not only has her beloved, eccentric Aunt Rose passed, but she's left Madeline her equally eccentric bookstore housed in an old Victorian mansion in the small college town of Enigma. But when she arrives in her beat-up Fiat to claim The Old Juniper Bookstore, and restart her life, Madeline is faced with unexpected challenges. The gazebo in the back yard is set ablaze and a late night caller threatens to burn the whole store down if she doesn't leave immediately.

But Madeline Brimley, not one to be intimidated, ignores the threats and soldiers on. Until there's another fire and a murder in the store itself. Now with a cloud of suspicion falling over her, it's up to Madeline to untangle the skein of secrets and find the killer before she herself is the next victim.

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My Review: Very cozy indeed. Slow of pace, low on suspense, modest stakes as a result...I never got the sense Madeline believed she was in real danger, always a risk in a mystery...but what I got was the balm of feeling at home.

A bookstore, a small town where you're a known quantity, a problem to solve that demands attention you'd otherwise devote to unhealthy rumination on unfixable crap from the past, all marry the needs of the moment and the desire to see ma'at served. It happens so seldom in the real world. I read on, certain I knew who was behind the deeds most dastardly (I was right, if it matters), coddiwompling along in no particular hurry to get to the end. This, by itself, this ability to go somehere I *knew* Rightness and Justice would prevail, was so soothing to my outraged sensibilities that I was happy to ignore my crotchets. A too-convenient aversion to cell phones was my biggest gripe about Madeline.

The pace is likely to put many off, though as a class cozy-mystery readers do not seem to me all that interested in how fast we're traveling. Unless the trip is, for some personal reason, unpleasant to them, the cozylover tends towards the vibe-reader end of things. This story is all about the vibes. Even Gloria, the new priest in town, failed to rub me the wrong way. Quite a feat for a religious professional.

So I got over the "three-stars-just-fine" hump. I couldn't go all the way to four because in a different context there's no way I'd get past three.

We are where we are, so three and a half grateful to be wiled away into a gentler place stars it is.

WHAT TIME THE SEXTON'S SPADE DOTH RUST, eleventh (!) in the Flavia de Luce mystery series

WHAT TIME THE SEXTON'S SPADE DOTH RUST (Flavia de Luce #11)
ALAN BRADLEY
Bantam Books
$28.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Flavia de Luce has taken on the mentorship of her odious moon-faced cousin Undine, who has come to live at Buckshaw following the death of her mother. Undine’s main talent, aside from cultivating disgusting habits, seems to be raising Flavia’s hackles, although in her best moments she shows potential for trespassing, trickery, and other assorted mayhem.

When Major Greyleigh, a local recluse and former hangman, is found dead after a breakfast of poisonous mushrooms, suspicion falls on the de Luce family’s longtime cook, Mrs. Mullet. After all, wasn’t it she who’d picked the mushrooms, cooked the omelet, and served it to Greyleigh moments before his death? “I have to admit,” says Flavia, an expert in the chemical nature of poisons, “that I’d been praying to God for a jolly good old-fashioned mushroom poisoning. Not that I wanted anyone to die, but why give a girl a gift such as mine without giving her the opportunity to use it?”

But Flavia knows the beloved Mrs. Mullet is innocent. Together with Dogger, estate gardener and partner-in-crime, and the obnoxious Undine, Flavia sets out to find the real killer and clear Mrs. Mullet’s good name. Little does she know that following the case’s twists and turns will lead her to a most surprising discovery—one with the power to upend her entire life.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Re-entering the fantasy world that is Buckshaw under the sole, legal rule of Flavia de Luce was...shocking, really. I know it's been four, maybe five years since I read the last one, but howinahell did I suspend disbelief for nine, or was it ten?, books with a kid behaving like an adult? And getting away with it?! No one, not one soul, seems to think "someone ought to be responsible for this kid's social development" and that makes me really unhappy.

So the hill of disbelief needed reclimbing. It was a trudge.

I was, about a third of the way in, ready to give up and Pearl-Rule this bad boy. I didn't because my memories of pleasures past were strong. Sort of literary ex-sex. I'd mostly forgotten the dramatis personae, so it took a while to get my eye back in on Undine...insufferable brat...Dogger, Mrs. Mullet, and Daffy, the last of Flavia's siblings still at Buckshaw.

The characters urging Flavia to get bratty, tantrum-prone Undine some kind of counseling are feeding into the idea that Flavia is, somehow or other, functionally an adult. As a smart kid myself...I read the Encyclopedia Brittanica for fun between the ages of nine and twelve...I'm here to say Flavia's smarts are believable but her emotional maturity, as far as it goes, is not. Her quite justified resentment of her older sisters, unengaged in her development apart from the expected sibling ugliness, shows the limitations of a fantasy of liberated childhood. It makes Flavia come across as far too adult for her not to pursue the earlier nastiness against now-married Feely and soon-to-depart Daffy, university bound bookworm and seemingly uninterested last sister.

So...Undine. She's a cousin, also orphaned, whose antics affect Flavia as her own antics affected Feely and Daffy in earlier books. She's the embodiment of the Parents' Curse: "May you have a child exactly like you, only moreso." Undine makes her value to Flavia obvious by getting and giving to her a very relevant clue to solving the puzzle set in this book. Mrs. Mullet...the suspect needing Flavia's help this time...that one's a very, very deep pool, and much more than has met the eye heretofore. But let's go outside the fantasy realm for a moment, what kind of awful effects does leaving what I'd honestly describe as a badly damaged by neglect kid in charge of one of the same create? Undine (every time I type her name I get frissons of Undine Spragg, from Wharton's The Custom of the Country and her ghastly, entitled 'tude that ends so very badly) needs, much like Flavia did, custodianship, not the gentle and lovely guidance (as opposed to rules and standards) of servants like Dogger and Mrs. Mullet. Really, though, that's the practical adult speaking, not the series reader.

Observant souls, all three of y'all, will note I said "did" above. That's due to my response to the Big Honkin' Twist near the end. No, I won't spoil it, but suffice it to say this really changes everything. I honestly had to talk myself down off the Pearl-Rule ledge again when I got there.

So how came I to give the book four whole stars? It sounds like I'm ready to rip it a new one, doesn't it? I might have. It was a close thing a couple times. I've said in lots of different places that I don't do a lot of re-reading. I have so many books that I will die with a lot unread. This was not always the case. When I was being "raised" by a neglectful, when she wasn't abusive mother, I read and re-read uncounted times Dodie Smith's 1956 novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Not the Disney-fied version, I hasten to add. That bowdlerized abomination is an affront to the rescue fantasy so brilliantly penned by the delightful Smith. This series is a forceful evocation of my own tween years, managing a world I wasn't prepared for without support and while dealing with absent or actively unhelpful siblings. I'm sucked in by this extraordinarily gifted kid's clever management of her world, doing so well that no one thinks a thing of enabling it further. I wasn't so good at it, this being reality...but it's a fun way to revise my life in my entertainment.

Don't start with this one, but if you left the series and forgot why you started it, jump in. You really didn't miss much in between, and this one's fun...from the proper series-reader perspective. Take off the rational grown-up hat.

THE FLAVIA DE LUCE SERIES: I AM HALF-SICK OF SHADOWS (#4); SPEAKING FROM AMONG THE BONES (#5)

I AM HALF-SICK OF SHADOWS (Flavia de Luce #4)
ALAN BRADLEY
Delacorte Press
$4.99 ebook editions, available now

ORIGINALLY REVIEWED ON LIBRARYTHING CHRISTMAS 2011

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: It’s Christmastime, and Flavia de Luce—an eleven-year-old sleuth with a passion for chemistry—is tucked away in her laboratory, whipping up a concoction to ensnare Saint Nick. But she is soon distracted when a film crew arrives at Buckshaw, the de Luces’ decaying English estate, to shoot a movie starring the famed Phyllis Wyvern. Amid a raging blizzard, the entire village of Bishop’s Lacey gathers at Buckshaw to watch Wyvern perform, yet nobody is prepared for the evening’s shocking conclusion: a body found strangled to death with a length of film.

But who among the assembled guests would stage such a chilling scene? As the storm worsens and the list of suspects grows, Flavia must ferret out a killer hidden in plain sight.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!

My Review: Flavia de Luce does Christmas. Buckshaw, Bishop's Lacey, is now the scene of Ilium Films's new Phyllis Wyvern extravaganza, The Cry of the Raven. The film company has paid the desperately strapped-for-cash Colonel Haviland de Luce a sizable sum to use Buckshaw as the backdrop for this bound-to-be-mega hit, which means Christmas will be spent with an entire film crew up the family's collective backside. Flavia meets the famous Miss Wyvern as she enters the house, charming as cheesecake on a plate of strawberries, even winning the adulation of the normally suspicious Flavia by demonstrating her apparently genuine interest in matters of murder: She quotes from the dreadful gossip sheet Illustrated London News about a recent scandalous killing. Well then!

Not long after the lady's arrival, the cast and crew and director make their various appearances, as does the Vicar, with a modest proposal: He'd like famous movie star Wyvern to appear as Juliet, her star-making role, in a village fete in aid of the church roof's repair. To absolutely universal astonishment, Miss Wyvern agrees, and the plot begins to spin faster and faster. Since the hairpins have begun to fall, and Miss Wyvern's true meanness is revealed, the fact that she's murdered by someone present at Buckshaw after the fete...which includes just about the whole village, since a blizzard's blown in, sealing all the audience in Buckshaw's foyer...comes as no surprise whatever.

Even though the bloom has gone off the rose of Flavia's admiration for the lady, a murder under her own roof is simply too much to resist meddling in! And meddle she does, searching the victim's room and even standing in at the post-mortem examination of the body. Flavia, though, is callously shut out by Inspector Hewitt of the Hinley P.D., as is his wont. He has, thinks Flavia, personal animus against her now, as Flavia made a terrible break at tea taken in the Hewitt home.

But in the end, Flavia solves the horrible, tawdry crime, and fails to become the next murder victim herself by dint of one of her chemistry experiments designed to trap Santa Claus on his way to the chimney, thereby disproving her horrible, heartless sisters's claims that there is no Santa. And, at the very tippy-end of the book, Buckshaw's future at the hands of the tax receivers is probably averted thanks to the very play that caused the Christmas crisis to begin with...a lovely, deft scene that wrapped up an end I was really ticked about having loose.

Merry Christmas indeed, Flavia.

Every series needs a Christmas book. This is it. If you liked the others, this one will please you; but it has the standard plot-hole and plausibility flaws. If they didn't tick you off before, they won't now, either. Happy Holidays!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


SPEAKING FROM AMONG THE BONES (Flavia de Luce #5)
ALAN BRADLEY
Delacorte Press
$4.99 ebook editions, available now

ORIGINALLY REVIEWED ON LIBRARYTHING FEBRUARY 2013

Rating: 3.9* of five

The Publisher Says: Eleven-year-old amateur detective and ardent chemist Flavia de Luce is used to digging up clues, whether they’re found among the potions in her laboratory or between the pages of her insufferable sisters’ diaries. What she is not accustomed to is digging up bodies.

Upon the five-hundredth anniversary of St. Tancred’s death, the English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey is busily preparing to open its patron saint’s tomb. Nobody is more excited to peek inside the crypt than Flavia, yet what she finds will halt the proceedings dead in their tracks: the body of Mr. Collicutt, the church organist, his face grotesquely and inexplicably masked. Who held a vendetta against Mr. Collicutt, and why would they hide him in such a sacred resting place? The irrepressible Flavia decides to find out. And what she unearths will prove there’s never such thing as an open-and-shut case.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!

My Review: The ending threw me a curve.

The middle was a busy muddle.

The beginning was a laugh a minute.

And I enjoyed it all. I didn't know who the murderer was, and when revealed I was a bit surprised I hadn't thought of that. I was mildly ticked that, at the ending of the book after the murderer was disposed of, a loose end wasn't tucked tidily away but rather left to be part of the cliffhanger resolution. If Mr. Bradley should happen to pass into his Eternal Reward before the next book is completed and edited, I shall engage every root woman and witch doctor and psychic and spiritualist I can locate to hound the rotter into spirit-writing it.

So, since I'm usually a tartar about judging cozies, demanding the characters and the plot mesh, why am I still reading these somewhat ramshackle novels? After all, the murderer's identity isn't at all well set up, and the red herrings are ummm far-fetched, and the propulsive event is barely, barely set up and then ignored.

Yeah, well, cozies are about characters and about a species of ma'at maintenance, and these novels deliver all the pleasures of those qualities in spades, doubled. Bradley's quite improbable little genius Flavia de Luce is a pill of the first water, a know-it-all, and a little girl on the edge of some enormous growings-up that all of us who've passed through adolescence can empathize with. Her passive, defeated father, her cruel sisters, her delightful world of Buckshaw with its fully equipped chemistry lab and its decaying splendor, and the people of Bishop's Lacey, all mix together into an immersive Barsetshire-esque experience of enfolding charm and warmth.

This is the fifth book, don't begin here if you're picking up a new series as too much will be a spoiler for some payoff surprises in earlier books. But should you pick up the series at all? Hmmm. Don't, if you're a puzzle-solver; don't, if you have to have a sleuth whose abilities and access are believable; do, if you're after the aforementioned immersive experience.

But, if you do read the book, I defy you not to laugh at the fate of the Heart of Lucifer.