This story bowls along at a fast clip with an effective pattern of alternating narrators. The initial event is when Jo Tulip, the heroine, has a blind dinner date with a man startlingly unlike his photograph who proceeds to drop dead in the restaurant. The resulting police investigation unearths strange happenings. There is a parallel love story and events involving a separate set of characters who gradually move towards meeting each other and sparking off a potentially catastrophic climax.
Jo Tulip is a good central character - a rather disillusioned single woman who runs a business based on a website offering household hints and handy advice; such tips are provided as introductions to chapters narrated by Jo. The website actually exists and can be visited.
Mindy Starns Clark can tell a very good story and her characters are, on the whole, believable. The mystery, as the converging characters gradually reveal their concerns, is very well sustained and the thrills of the last section are excitingly piled up.
The cover describes this book as a Smart Chick Mystery and a note on the back cover reveals that this is the second in a series with the third and final episode to be published soon. I did not find it difficult to read Blind Dates can be Murder without having previously read The Trouble with Tulip since the bones of that first story were crafted into this one. I did find the final paragraph of the book slightly irritating since it so obviously led into the next adventure but it is an understandable plot device in such circumstances.
The comment on the back cover ‘As Jo and Danny work to uncover the truth, they learn the biggest truth of all: With God, nothing is impossible,’ is an indication of the book’s Christian content. There is no doubt that detective fiction frequently represents a struggle between good and evil with, hopefully, the bad getting their just desserts and the good their reward so readers may find this a satisfying conclusion.
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Jennifer S. Palmer
Mindy Starns Clark has published six previous books. As stated during the review Blind Dates can be Murder is the second of a series of three books, the first was The Trouble with Tulip and the third is in preparation.