Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

By Jesse Q. Sutanto.

"People always say that your wedding day is the happiest day of your life, but honestly, people should try solving murders more often."

"Oh, you young people take everything so personal nowadays. So what if I think you might be a killer? That doesn't mean I think you are a bad person." -Vera Wong

When you first meet Vera Wong, she doesn't seem like someone you're going to like very much. She wakes up at the crack of dawn, texts her kid at the crack of dawn to guilt him to wake up at the crack of dawn, comes off as well, stereotypical naggy mom that drives her kid nuts. She runs a tea house ("Vera Wang's World Famous Teahouse" because everyone's heard of Vera Wang) that has one loyal customer and otherwise gets ignored. She wakes up, opens the shop, serves her lone customer, sits there, goes home.

I will note that if you find Vera annoying, or off-putting, or reminds you of a relative, or anything like that and you want to put the book down early on--KEEP READING. Seriously, keep on reading.

Anyway, the next day Vera goes downstairs to her shop and finds that some random guy she's never seen before apparently broke in and died in there. Vera wants to help investigate--she literally draws the line around the body in Sharpie to help the police, which they just do not appreciate at all--and when some new people suddenly develop interest in her business after the guy's death, she....befriends and adopts them all while trying to figure out which one murdered Marshall Chen. Or was he murdered at all? (I'll discuss that in the spoiler cut.)

The cast of potential murderers/new friends and family that Vera adopts are:

• Riki, a guy who definitely had a beef with Marshall and is feeling weird after their last encounter
• Sana, an artist who got ripped off by Marshall and has similar issues (and mutual attraction between her and Riki)
• Oliver, Marshall's twin, who was overshadowed and treated like crap by him their entire life. Marshall also poached Oliver's best friend and drove them apart.
• Julia, Marshall's psychologically abused wife, who found out last night he was leaving her, and she bagged all of his crap and threw it out in the living room...in time for the cops to see.
• Emma, Julia's shy toddler daughter, who's reasonably scared of baba (and pretty much everyone).

Seriously, Vera goes from "oh man, this lady would drive you nuts" to A FREAKING GODSEND to these people. She brings Emma out of her shell and teaches her to be her sous chef. She makes amazing large meals for everyone. She ends up moving into Julia's house and taking care of both of them and bringing Julia out of her own shell with her photography business. She supports everyone (or tries to fix them up, or both) while investigating. Heck, Vera even forgets to nag her own kid while suddenly getting a new family, who end up adoring her even if she's a wee bit pushy. Of course, there's that pesky murder or not issue to worry about there.

This book was extremely touching and endearing and I love everybody, and it even made the whole dead body thing work! (See below spoiler cut for discussion of that.) I kvelled. It was one giant AWWWWWWWWWWW to read this. Four and a half stars. Everyone read it! 

Rest in Pink

By Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer.

Previous book here.

The shenanigans continue in Burney, Ohio. Liz and Vince are still happily dating/boinking, Anemone has settled in and started dating the police chief, George, and little Peri Blue has moved into Anemone's rented "Blue House" since her mom went to rehab. Grandma Faye is hellbent on kidnapping poor Peri, but Anemone and Liz (who have legal paperwork saying they're in charge here) are dragons protecting her, and Liz accompanies Peri to every after-school lesson. 

However, someone's setting fires all over town, and it looks like it's Faye's evil jailbird brother Mickey, who's out of jail and back to his old vendetta against the Blue family and/or trying to get money. In addition to the actual fires, Thomas Thacker, Anemone's previous ghostwriter who she fired, also wants to get vengeance against well, Anemone, Liz, and I guess whoever the heck else he wants? He moves into a motel, starts hacking into the Burney Facebook page* and starts threatening to publish a book about all the secrets of Burney. To which I am all, this is a small town, what audience do you HAVE for this book?!, though it does get amusing when it starts to get a bit of out of town tourism. People are hard up for cash, buildings are on fire, and two companies, Vermillion and ECOmena (look at that last name real closely), are trying to buy up the buildings in town. George is getting harassed by the major and forced to take on a layabout detective mole, which leads him to promote Vince to detective status. And Vince is still detecting the whole "Navy Blue, was it suicide or not" thing from the last book. 

• note: some of this is absolutely the funniest shit, between the running gag of the hacking, a certain undeserving somebody begging for people to GoFundThem and getting next to nothing, and later when someone else starts hacking the page and writing posthumous entries involving "yes, all your dead pets are in heaven," it just gets funnier and funnier.

I feel like this book got even more into the cases, the mysteries, and the world. I enjoyed Liz's musings on writing Anemone's book, as she's decided to frame it all around Anemone's housing fixation throughout her life. Even though Liz doesn't seem that inclined to parent, she does clearly enjoy having Peri around. Anemone's desire to fix things and house people becomes more of a plotline, and while I'm still trying to figure out what Anemone is famous for (not acting, apparently, maybe just having a bunch of ex-husbands...?), she's a great character to have move to town. Liz also has a bit to deal with with the family revelations from the last book, and while she's mostly avoiding the parents these days, her family references are hilarious. (And then come to bite her in the ass a bit when Mickey comes to town.) . I also enjoy the use of pink in this book, from the color of the corpse to a pink weapon. It all works together great. On a personal note, Liz and Vince are admitted commitmentphobics, but are creeping towards acknowledging that they are in it for the long haul. Vince engineers a special gift for Liz or two that are just freaking ADORABLE, and he just keeps going with it. I liked the resolution at the end about how nobody's going to leave. Awwwww. I also liked how Liz went into all of the bad history she had in the town and how she'd wanted to leave so bad to become someone else, too. I got verklempt. 

Even though to some degree it's not super mystery--like I said, you know who's getting up to shit here--I enjoyed the journey quite a lot. People though I was weird reading a book (on phone) while at a bar last night, but it was that good! I look forward to the third book next month, where it sounds like business and running for mayor may be the plotlines.

Quotes:

• Liz on ghostwriting: "The spine of their lives is rarely what they think it is, so my job is to convince them that this is what their lives are really about so that they get the book they want while telling the truth, or as close as I can come without depressing the hell out of them. They give me the plot and I make it make sense."
• Also: "Anemone has a dark side and I have seen it. This, of course, makes her fascinating to write about, but also nerve-wracking at times."
• Also: "I can tell you that for Anemone, a husband is a focal point. She loves him, and then she takes care of him, and that points her in a direction of accomplishment, something she can manage, and she becomes amazing at whatever that is. Not all her husbands appreciated that she was better at their careers than they were, but that was their problem. Anemone glows when she has a purpose. She's been a little short on purpose for the past ten years." 
• Also: "I'm saying that based on the patterns in your life, Burney is your next focus, and God help us all."
• More Liz: "You know, I'd be okay with my life being an open book if people would quit reading out loud from it." 
• Vince, when asked about the new detective: "He fell over backward in his chair today. We think tomorrow is going to be even better for him." 
• Vince: "But come on, it was two women and a kid. I was a combat-hardened Ranger. What could go wrong?"
• Rain: "Really, Vince, Burney is like Mayberry except with arson and murder."
• Liz: "I don't want you to rescue me, I want us to rescue each other, if that makes sense." 

There will be a Spoiler Space Quotes below the cut.

Lavender's Blue

By Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer.

The start of this new series has A Story. After years of writer's block, Jenny Crusie re-partnered up with her old writing partner, Bob Mayer, and together they've created a terrific start to this series. I read Jenny's blog and I've been chomping at the bit for this one for years, and now that they're self-publishing the first three books, I'll actually get them pretty soon. Huzzah! I read their original three partnered novels and while I enjoyed them, their two styles of snarky lady partners with military dude took awhile to mesh. (Annoyingly, my blog search can't seem to find the reviews for these.)  I am happy to note that this book really managers to mesh those two styles together, and I liked Vince, who's tough but in his own way tender, as a match for Liz. This romance is quick and it works. 

Liz Danger is a ghostwriter from Burney, Ohio, a place where she had A Bad Reputation as a teenager: both for being romantically involved with Cash Porter, a dude who dumped her three times, and for (supposedly) changing George Pens's campaign posters to "Penis." I note George lost the election, is now police chief, and is still not happy about this one, especially since the current mayor is an asshole. Liz's mom was a single parent and eventually got treatment for her alcoholism, but growing up in Burney was not a fun time for Liz, and she booked the hell out of there once she was legal.

After her mean/crazy aunt ML sends her a nasty note about her mother, Liz sucks it up and briefly goes to visit her mother for her birthday, bringing a large red teddy bear out of guilt (Liz's mom MaryBeth collects way too many bears). Unfortunately, having a little car incident traps Liz in town longer than she planned on, JUST in time for Cash's wedding to high-class rich girl Lavender Blue. The Blues are the rich family in town (and Liz is related to them, albeit more than she knows), and it 's a cold-as-ice political marriage for sure. Cash keeps coming onto Liz and Liz is not remotely interested. Meanwhile, the bride actually kind of takes an odd liking to Liz, who is honest and also not trying to get anything out of Lavender, and when the maid of honor bails and nobody else in the family will do, Lavender asks Liz to step in. Does this make sense to you? Not really to me either, but Liz goes for it after her current boss wants her to, and thus she's around for all kinds of wedding drama. The bride gives an infamous wedding speech, gets locked up by guards, trades dresses with Liz to sneak out and meet up wit her ex-fiance, and then someone goes after the family pearls and Lavender's dead.

In addition to all of that, Liz rescues a dachshund (based on Jenny Crusie's dog) and starts to work at rescuing young Peri Blue, whose mom is clearly having alcohol issues since the death of her husband Navy. (Punny names ahoy!) Liz is also trying to get her butt over to her current employer, Anemone Patterson, who is a hoot. Anemone becomes so addicted to hearing about the small town drama that she decides to move there and see it all for herself. And when Liz finds out why her aunt's been such a jerk for so many years, things get even rockier.

Thank goodness for Vince Cooper, a former Army Ranger who took a job as a cop in Burney for the quiet. While Vince is quietly dealing with his own issues regarding a dying former teammate and possibly coming down with the same health issues that are killing his Ranger friends, he's an excellent support to Liz and a smart investigator to boot. Vince and Liz become hot and heavy pretty much instantly, but it works. He's also quietly been investigating the suspicious suicidal(?) death of Navy Blue, especially whatever financial chicanery was going on at the time. 

I enjoyed the heck out of reading this, it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the characters. Liz and Vince work as a couple, the supporting nice characters are great, the overall mystery works. I have already pre-ordered the next two books in the first trilogy. I've missed Jenny's books and I'm happy she has a new one out, and this re-partnership with Bob Mayer is really going well and they mesh even better. I look forward to more Burney drama!

I only have a few quibbles to mention. 

(a) I do want to note, in a vaguely spoilerish way, that both the mayoral drama (same major being in the job for 15 years) and the kind of murder that goes on here reminded me of Welcome to Temptation, a comment I'll elaborate on in the spoiler space.  Couldn't help but notice that.

(b) I'm kind of confused as to how if (a) Burney is SUCH a small town where all the rumors go around, and (b) Liz is related to the Blues--at the start of the book we're told that Aunt ML (MaryLou Blue...har har) is married to a Blue and Liz is close to her cousin Molly--how the heck is Liz not very (?) acquainted with Navy, Skye, Lavender, and the rest of that family? (Note: she apparently knew Navy and thought he was a jerk, doesn't sound like she knew the sisters at all?) It sounds like all of those people were presumably around on some level before she left town, or at least aren't younger than 15. It seemed really weird that Liz didn't know the Blues that weren't Molly/Dayton/ML, and made it even weirder that Lavender essentially asked a total stranger (and ex of her fiance, though it's such a loveless engagement for political reasons that Lavender doesn't even seem to care that her sister's probably slept with him too) to be in her wedding. That's a level of off-ness in logic that's hard to make work, and it's a credit to the authors that it almost does, but it's still pretty weird that Liz, who's been gone for years and hasn't had any involvement in this drama, gets pulled in with more or less strangers, even if they are relatives. 

(note: upon asking online, some people said that Lavender and Skye were probably under the age of 10 when Liz left. I wasn't clear on that.)

But this gets four stars from me, because even though I thought that whole situation was kinda weird, I had a great time reading it. More, please. 

Travel by Bullet

By John Scalzi.

Previous book here. I am happy to report that this one is now out in ebook, so I could read it a whole lot faster.

The pandemic screwed over Tony Valdez's career, like many others. His potential job working for the police went away, and now he's stuck working at hospitals, and thanks to a new law, he spends his day explaining over and over again how shooting someone in their current health condition won't actually save them. 

Then his sorta-friend-sorta-work-colleague Mason comes into the ER, about to die from injuries he suffered after throwing himself out of a car, which Mason says was his best option at the time. Mason says that nowhere he could go if shot will be safe, Tony suggests his condo, and after Mason is put out of his misery, he leaves Tony with a weird object and some cryptic remarks.

Turns out Mason's involved with crypto (God help ya, crypto) and several billionaires, one of whom recently killed himself and left his access to his stash behind. All of those billionaires would like Mason's crypto-wallet, which he left with Tony (and Tony amusingly hides in a safe place away from himself), and others' safety isn't the biggest concern. 

Overall, I enjoyed it, even if anything involving crypto makes me roll my eyes (and I did get a laugh out of Tony's reaction to it at the end) and is inherently confusing to well, most of us. God knows I'm not a money person, but I think the author did the best he could to explain this whole concept. I enjoy Tony and Langdon together and how Tony navigates around shady people. I still think we could use more of Tony having an inner life (we find out he's divorced here, and that's it). 

I'm probably a little less into this one because of crypto, but otherwise it was good. Three and a half stars. 

The Final Gambit

By Jennifer Lynn Barnes.

Previous book here. 

I feel like I was having Reading Funk again in that I was going through the beginning of this rather slowly and then finally speeded up as the book went on. I'm not going to be able to write too much about this, when I'm in that mode (sigh), but I liked how things finally felt like they lined up and organized and I finally had it down as to who was secretly related to who, why Avery was put in the position she was in (and we finally got more posthumous info on that), who the real enemy is, where missing people are, and how Avery is good enough to strategize exactly which chess games to lose and which to win. I was pretty impressed.

I'm happy the love interest stuff sorted out and is happily resolved without ugly love triangle drama, and we actually get to meet one missing dad, who's pretty cool. Avery manages to outscheme and outgambit, create a happy resolution to the "I inherited way too much money to be reasonable" situation, and all goes well. I left the series satisfied. Four stars. 

Oh, and no sooner did I finish that than I saw there's a fourth book coming out this year....

The Spare Man

By Mary Robinette Kowal.

Excerpt here.

This is "The Thin Man IN SPACE," and that's all to the good.

Tesla Crane is an inventor/heiress/famous rich lady who was in a horrible accident several years ago that left her disabled, with a pain device in her back, and THE WORLD'S MOST ADORABLE SERVICE DOG EVER, a tiny white Westie named Gimlet that everyone loves. She's just gotten married to recently-retired private detective Shal Steward, and they're trying to have an anonymous space honeymoon to Mars, when guess what, here's a dead body, Shal finds it, and is immediately targeted as the murderer even though he literally didn't even know the woman. (In a space future where everyone is "Mx. Whatever" and pronouns are everywhere, I still note the brown guy is fingered for the crime. I started watching the new season of Schmigadoon! this week and the same thing happens to poor Dr. Josh when he finds a dead lady and is checking the body. Weird coincidence.)

Anyway, as Shal is literally getting beat up by the cruiser police, Tesla needs to lose her disguise (even if it means she's got to sign autographs), keep trying to get her Internet connections back and her lawyer on the space phone, fight against her bodily issues, and solve the crimes (more bodies pile up, and one appears to be missing) even if the space police have some issues with that. We get an interesting cast of characters, including a kid who recognizes Tesla from a competition and has a shady parent, the ship magician, some other famous/rich people, and cruiser staff ranging from nice to naughty. She also deploys her adorable dog in many helpful ways to both investigate and disarm people (and in one case, the one person who doesn't like her...watch it!), which is utterly charming. 

I would like to note that the lawyer on earth, Fantine, is a frantic crocheter while under stress AND THAT'S AMAZING AND I LOVE IT SO. She's delightfully scary and foul-mouthed and exactly who you'd want to defend you against wrongful murder charges. I admit it's kind of hard to comprehend exactly how their phone-calls-at-a-several-minutes-lag conversations must be going IRL, but I'm not sure how you'd handle that in a narrative either. 

Overall, I enjoyed this very much and it was a fun read. Should these two solve more mysteries, this would not surprise me. Four stars. 

Station Eternity

By Mur Lafferty.

"Chaos and shit follow me everywhere I go. I show up at a party, someone dies and someone else gets abducted by a passing alien ship? That doesn't happen everywhere." -Mallory

This is definitely "Jessica Fletcher" (or any other murder mystery magnet) "goes to space," and then it gets weird. 

Mallory Viridian is some kind of murder mystery magnet. She tends to be around when someone gets murdered, and she's able to identify the connections and the weird ways things happen. Unfortunately, this has gone terribly for with regards to trying to have a romantic relationship (she can't, someone dies), or frankly, doing much of anything. Most cops don't believe her, except one guy who isn't in the book much but has sworn to keep her out of being able to work in any criminal field. The only way Mallory can make a living is to write books based on her experiences.

Then First Contact happens, and various species make themselves known to the planet, and when Mallory ends up around yet another murder at a military base, she finds out there's an option to go move to a sentient space station, where very few humans are. Maybe if she's not around other humans, this won't keep happening. Sure, she has to become a research subject to a buggy hivemind species to make a living and eating in alien restaurants and figuring out what she can eat is an adventure, but at least she can make a few interspecies friends without issue. 

However, after moving to Station Eternity, one day Eternity decides she's willing to let a shuttle full of humans visit, and naturally Mallory is OH SHIT PEOPLE ARE GONNA DIE AND NOBODY LISTENS TO ME OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT.  Also in a similar "oh shit oh shit oh shit" situation is her college friend Van, a military guy who's been involved in top secret shit and was also at the last murder Mallory was at. Upon ducking his own murder, he literally got picked up by some friendly/wasted aliens, and has also been hiding out on the station/human military for going AWOL. 

Why yes, it does seem like a coincidence that Mallory and Xan run into each other periodically, but that isn't the only one. Because once the station's symbiont being is killed and there's a horrible shuttle accident that takes out most of the passengers, Mallory finds out the survivors (and at least one deceased) have connections to her and/or Xan. Coincidence? Probably not. 

There's also a semi-confusing subplot about the Gneiss, a large rocky species that can transform themselves into shuttles or something else. Mallory and Xan have made friends with Stephanie*, Ferdinand, and Tina, a trio of Gneiss friends. Apparently Tina--the nice but dumb one--is some kind of Gneiss royalty, and Stephanie's royalty-obsessed grandfather the shuttle is somehow convinced that Stephanie might do something or other to Tina, which doesn't make sense, nor do the other two seem inclined to want to rule a planet. This turns into a whole thing involving transformation and most of the hibernating Gneiss in the station getting riled up... This was interesting, but frankly I'm not entirely sure if I got everything that was going on with this or why this was going on now. 

* I note there's a translator thing people get installed in themselves that translates names into what you can understand.

For those of you wondering if there's a romance, I'm gonna say "not really." Mallory is vaguely interested in Xan, but frankly, they're too busy and Xan seems averse to impulsive ladies. Well, maybe in the next book (one gets the feeling if there's a subtitle called "The Midsolar Murders," it may be a series).

I will say that the plot gets fairly convoluted--especially with certain alien things going on--but things do eventually make sense and get explained, particularly Mallory's "is she cursed or what" sort of affliction, which I'll discuss below the spoiler cut.

Beyond that, the various alien species in this are certainly inventive. I enjoyed getting to know the various suspects/murder victims in this, as some of them got particularly interesting or inventive in how they were handled. (Has someone told Seanan McGuire to read this book? There's a Manic Pixie Chaos-y Murder Girl in this she'll love.) The Brown family are also intriguing when you get to know them. There's also the concept that all the other species get into symbiotic relationships with other beings, and they think it's pretty weird that humans don't do that--well, the only things similar on their planet are parasites or cancer--and that whole concept gets some cool development. 

Overall the book is an entertaining chaotic-y mess, but does sort itself out into a satisfying resolution, thankfully. I give it four stars. I've been in January funk and while some books I'm literally taking months to read right now (why?!), I whipped through this in probably 24 hours, barring other things to do in life like theater. 

The Witness for the Dead

By Katherine Addison.

Previous book in the world here, though not particularly a sequel.  (Annoyingly, I can't recall when I read the first one and can't find it in a search.) This follows the work of Thara Celahar, professional Witness for the Dead, as he can sometimes pick up information  off dead bodies. (I note this isn't something that seems to go on all the time, or very dramatically.) The cases he deals with are:

• The murder of an opera singer, who sounds dreadful except for her voice. Thief, blackmailer, spendthrift, and general asshole. Hard to nail down one particular suspect there. I note that Thara is attracted to a composer at the opera, who is a suspect, albeit not a particularly strong one, but this seems to remind Thara of his previous romantic misfortune (apparently he was involved with a married dude who killed his wife...awkward).
• He gets asked to do his job to determine who was supposed to be the heir in a will, and then the very prominent family Objects Most Strongly to the results, harassing Thara and forcing him to go through an ordeal of being stuck on a hill with ghosts to prove his um, innocence. 
• He ends up on the trail of a guy who marries plain women with some money and then poisons them.
• He goes to another town to put down a ghoul, and then ends up helping a grandfather and granddaughter who have been separated to connect.
• While meeting said granddaughter, he ends up at the site of a horrible airship accident, and then gets harassed for not proving that someone did it deliberately.

This is kinda like following Columbo around on cases, I suppose. It's not a particularly deep novel like the last one, more procedural about different cases, no particular major personal development arc for the detective. But I enjoyed the reading of the mysteries. I just can't come up with much commentary on this, somehow? I'll give it three and a half stars. 

Caraval

By Stephanie Garber.

I'm not sure what is going on with this. 

Scarlett and (Donna)Tella are sisters with an abusive father, living on some kind of captive isle. Scarlett is obsessed with Caraval, some kind of magic show/game/thing her grandmother told her about it. She's written letters to the guy who runs it, Legend, asking that he come to her isle for years. But once she writes to tell him she's engaged (to some nameless count who writes nice letters), she finally gets an invite to Caraval, if she can just get herself to some other island. A suspiciously helpful "random" sailor named Julian helps the girls escape and then follows Scarlett into the game, for reasons of his own. The game turns out to be "find your sister 'cause Legend kidnapped her," and everything is mysterious and weird.

I can't say that things come out of nowhere in this one--I feel like things are set up in world and this stuff isn't out of the blue--but at the same time, things are confusing-ish, I suppose? Other players in the game don't really matter since the whole thing seems set up to deal with Scarlett's family drama. Weird, mysterious, magical things happen like having to literally die for a few days to get a dress (not worth it, I say). It's supposed to be all beautiful and mysterious and magical and mostly I was just "....I dunno, I feel as confused as Scarlett here." 

Scarlett's perennially vacillating between desperately trying to find her sister and developing the hots for Julian even though she doesn't want to. Julian's motives are god only knows what,  but he's hot and kind of helpful and Scarlett somehow trusts him anyway? They do give great hormones, though. Tella's not in the book much, but frankly she's kind of self-centered (even Scarlett thinks so) and probably not worth this much bother. However, I did enjoy a twist at the end regarding her that gave me much more respect for her character instead of always being a selfish bimbo-y girl. 

...I don't know. I wasn't quite in love with this one and wasn't sure if I was going to finish it? Maybe it's just a Not For Me But For Other People sort of thing. Three stars. 

Sense and Second-Degree Murder

By Tirzah Price.

Previous book in the same world here, though you really don't need to have read the first to get this one.

I LOVE the Dashwood sisters in this one. Elinor's a budding chemist. Marianne is a budding detective and helps her father in his detective business, and Margaret is a budding mystery novelist. Unfortunately everything goes to hell when their dad dies unexpectedly--presumably of poison--and their shitty brother John and SUPER SHITTY sister-in-law Fanny throw them out of their home and business. The girls investigate what happened to their father, which might have had something to do with the death of another budding female chemist. They also meet some eligible gentlemen: Edward Farrows (clearly the white sheep of the family, a secret sweetie), the overly-friendly Willoughby, and the standoffish-but-helpful Brandon (who is happily young enough in age in this for it not to be creepy). Lucy Steele hires the sisters to introduce her to "eligible gentlemen."

I love the Dashwoods in this! They are total feisty badasses! Even Elinor. I don't remember ever liking Margaret in other versions of this story, but she's great in this one (at one point she's all "I brought a smoke bomb!"). Elinor delightfully tells off her shitty brother and I was cheering. And then there's the smoking out of the murderer, which I won't quite spoil but I absolutely enjoyed the hell out of. Okay, I'll spoil it, but below the spoiler cut.

The only bad thing I have to say about this book is that at one point, someone vulnerable is clearly left alone for way too long with someone they should already pretty much suspect is a bad egg, and while everyone else is sorting out their whatevers, I wanted to yell, "Don't leave X alone with Y for so long!!!" I will note that my previous comments from the last book about "whoever's divey is probably whodunit" and "there's not that much romance but it's implied" still apply, but it didn't really bother me here? It's all very budding on the latter, and that's fine, and for me it wasn't so much whodunit so much as what-they-were-doing, I suppose. Not what I quite expected, but fit within the world.

Anyway, this is four and a half stars. VERY well done!