When Jamie Swift proprietor of the Beaumont newspaper needed some financial backing, her good friend Dedi Fontana found her a silent partner. Unfortunately the silent partner decides to inspect his investment, and turns out to be not so silent, but the well-known sexy Max Holt, Dedi’s younger brother.
We last met Dedi when her cousin Nick Kaharchek foisted her on an unsuspecting Billie Pearce in Full House. At that time Dedi was just two weeks off marrying wrestler Frankie Fontana. Sometime has passed since that happy event, and Frankie is now standing for mayor of Beaumont. Frankie is an upstanding character and is keen to clean up the town. However, it appears that there is an element in Beaumont that are not so keen on being cleaned up, and Frankie starts receiving threatening letters.
Before long the bullets are flying in Jamie’s direction or is it Max they are after? Things begin to hot up when circumstances throw Jamie and Max together, much to her fiancee Philip’s dismay. Philip’s mother Anabel Standish, a lady who lunches, is like Queen Victoria, not amused.
As with Full House, this is a romance with a mystery, and that simply wonderful comic flavour that is so Evanovich. There are some great characters in this book, all enhanced by the marvellous reading of Lorelie King. Max Holt has named his computer Muffin, and given it a Marilyn Monro voice, to which Loreli did full justice. We meet Vera, Jamie’s PA and right-hand at the newspaper, a good Baptist God-fearing woman, who keeps a ‘swear box’. It was also good to meet up with Dedi again, who has reached, albeit reluctantly, that time in life. She doesn’t take kindly to ‘hot flashes.’ Although, it’s summer in Dedi’s house you need your good wool coat!
Brilliantly read by Lorelei King, I heartily recommend this audio book.
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Lizzie Hayes