STAKEOUTS AND STROLLERS, award-winning debut cozy amateur-sleuth mystery

STAKEOUTS AND STROLLERS
ROB PHILLIPS
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Amateur private investigator and new dad Charlie Shaw gets more than he bargained for when he agrees to track down a young girl’s missing father in Rob Phillips’ award-winning debut.

Charlie Shaw is low on sleep. And cash. Otherwise, life is going pretty well for the ex-crime reporter: He’s happily married to his college sweetheart, he’s a first-time dad to the most adorable baby girl in existence, and he’s making ends meet as a rookie PI. But when Charlie meets Friday Finley, a frightened sixteen-year-old runaway on a stakeout-gone-wrong, his world gets a little more complicated.

Friday is looking for her estranged father Shawn, an unreliable alcoholic who left when she was young—and who also happens to be her only shot at avoiding the foster care system since her mother’s death a few weeks earlier. At first, Charlie believes the man is simply hiding out somewhere, avoiding his responsibilities as usual, but the more he investigates, the more unsettling—and dangerous—Shawn’s disappearance becomes. When his own family is threatened, Charlie realizes he’s in over his head, but can he back out now that he’s begun to care for Friday as his own?

A perfect blend of humor and high stakes, Stakeouts and Strollers is a heartwarming story of fatherhood, family, and what it really means to be a “Girl Dad.”

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My Review: This story won the 2024 Minotaur Books/Malice Domestic Best First Mystery Novel...an "award-winning debut" just sounds odd, at least to me it does.

There's little doubt in my mind that it deserved the award, though. Charlie Shaw was a newspaper crime reporter who, when laid off as it seems all must be in pursuit of more for the ownership class, pivots to using his detecting skills as an actual detective. This is not quite as easy as it might sound, since in addition to losing his reporting job, he's just become a dad for the first time. It's important to the plot: he's so besotted with his baby girl, he has her crib monitor up on his phone at all times thus using up his battery; when he needs to use the camera to document the identity of cheating spouse's side piece, he's got no juice to make the shot. This leads to closer involvement in the perpetrator's life than is healthy...for lots of reasons, Charlie should not get deep into this divorce.

Yet here we are.

Red herrings abound. Ryan, Charlie's wife and co-parent, is in a high position in her company so Charlie's flexible PI schedule makes this job perfect for new parenting, but also means he's sleep-deprived at weird moments so Ryan's making adjustments too. It's a story that brings the stuff of real life into its fictional plot in well-judged ways. All the players in the story are embroiled in family dynamics that give them depth greater than surface level. They all move through life making themselves crazy over trifles, worrying about how to connect better with their families, thinking about what to do to face problems and fix mistakes. It's a very good enhancement to a pretty standard PI plot.

What really sold me on the read was Charlie himself. He's narrating the events with a constant self-deprecating edge of humor. When violent things occur, it's not minimized by his sardonic edge. It's a different register from most PI mysteries, so it comes across as...surprising? fresh?...not as expected, anyway, which is greatly to the story's benefit and Author Phillips' credit.

I can't offer a fifth star, however, due to some squicky stuff around sexism. It's always down to male-gazery isn't it? Noticing and complimenting other women on their appearance, barely avoiding openly comparing his new-mother/full-time executive wife's body and style changes to pretty young things. The "night nurse" Ryan and Charlie employ is more a housekeeper than a nurse, uncomplainingly cleaning, caring for Baby Callie, then taking on a new caretaking job for a teen thanks to Charlie's impulsiveness. It's a stylistic choice to make the story very talky by having dialogue function as exposition at times...why would a man's wife say out loud that his sister died when he was a kid?...which is a trap as often as a bonus chance for emotional resonance.

I'll skip past some stuff that's all on the editor, because the author needs to be able to trust the guidance he's given. Our villain ain't a mystery for long; there are enough red herrings to make it plausible the villain might just be a shitty human being but I pegged the identity early on. *tsk* on you, Editor! Not factored into my rating.

I'd recommend the read, flaws and all, because Charlie's a particular kind of Guy, not a dudebro, not a Cinnamon Roll, but a regular ol' Guy you'll meet on a barstool, at a barbecue, in a post-office line. He means well, he's got a good attitude, he isn't interested in ragey stupid testosterone-y 'tude. I like him, and I think you might too. Get it from the library, by all means, but it's worth getting.

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.

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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 BLIND DEVOTION OF IMOGENE, billed as #1 in a series...stop here, no need for more

THE BLIND DEVOTION OF IMOGENE (The Misadventures of Imogene Taylor #1)
DAVID PUTNAM
Level Best Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$5.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: In 1973, Imogene Taylor is seventy-five years old, on parole for murder, and works at a store that sells dented canned goods. Twelve years earlier, she went to prison for killing her love-of-her-life-husband, Wayne. She called it an accident. The judge and jury called it murder. Imogene’s parole agent is constantly on her case, looking to send her back to prison.

During her time in prison, Imogene had to vent her angst at someone and sent the sitting Presidents (during the ten years in prison) threatening letters bringing her to the attention of the Secret Service. She does extensive research and writes a novel, Peekaboo POTUS, about the assassination of a US President. She sends the book "over the transom" to one publisher. The publisher, after being unable to contact Imogene, comes looking for her.

The Cigar, an organized crime gangster, walks into Dentco, where Imogene works, and extorts the store for protection money. Pay up or get firebombed. The entire strip center is under this threat.Imogene must dodge an overzealous parole agent while dealing with a dead woman in the neighbor’s garage. She’s on parole for murder, so she can’t report it to the police. No one would believe her. Imogene and Suz think the woman in the box is Suz’s long-estranged mother. Rather than reveal Suz’s father as the probable killer, Imogene convinces Suz to bury her mom under the avocado tree in the backyard. Until Thelma, Suz’s mother, appears after reading the obituary.

It's a race to uncover the real killer as Imogene dodges gangsters, family members, and a publisher on her quest to find the truth.

At the same time, Imogene’s neighbor dies of natural causes and leaves a hoarder’s mess to his daughter, Suzanne. Imogene helps Suz clear out a pyramid of boxes filled with junk in the garage. At the bottom of the pile, they find a box with a dead woman who has been hidden for many years.

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My Review: This book is a mess! The author, well-known as the creator of the eleven-book-long Bruno Johnson tough-guy cop/sleuth thrillers, ought to know better how to trim and prune repetitive dialogue, description, and general focus inconsistencies.

Also, why was this set in 1973? There was no reason I could discern that it needed to be in, or benefited from, such a setting. Given when this character's alleged murder takes place, for example, I'd think she would shy away from writing a novel about a presidential assassination. Not only was she locked up the year Kennedy was shot, she's writing her novel during the famously Trumpian vengeance-seeking Nixon's reign of terror.

You'd do well to stay off either one's radar.

Stick to the Bruno Johnson series.