You know how sometimes you’re flipping through TV channels and a show catches your attention, one you’ve never watched before, and you end up getting sucked into the episode. You realize that you’re coming in mid-season and there’s a lot of information about the characters you don’t have but still the episode is fun, engaging, and well done. You want more so you head to Netflix or Hulu.
That was my experience with this book, Rhythm & Clues, which is actually the 11th book in a mystery series by Sue Ann Jaffarian. The cover was what got my attention on NetGalley as did the funny promo description. At first, I was disappointed to find out that Odelia Grey was not a plus sized blues musician turned detective but a plus-sized paralegal. However, I found her and her family fun to get to know.
In this book, Odelia’s mother, Grace, who lives in a nearby retirement village, contacts Odelia because she and her friend, Art Franklin, are worried about another resident – Boaz Shankleman. He seems to have disappeared and nobody, not the police or the administrators of the retirement complex, is concerned. Grace gets Odelia’s attention by revealing that Boaz is really Bo Shank, the lead singer of Acid Storm, a band Odelia loved in her college days. Though Odelia thinks there is probably a reasonable explanation for Bo’s absence, she agrees to look into it. Of course, that doesn’t mean Grace and Art stop their own investigation and soon funny situations and some real danger ensue.
Though I now know (from reading some descriptions from earlier books) that there is a rich backstory about Odelia and her mother that forms the plot lines of earlier books, I really enjoyed their banter and their shared ability to stumble upon dead bodies and not keep sticking their noses into a case. Like most amateur detectives, Odelia has a complicated relationship with the police and then there’s the fact that her husband, who is out of town during most of this mystery, runs a security company (so she has some backup somewhere between Win and Ranger . . . dangerous but not psycho).
I finished this book thinking that I enjoyed spending time with Odelia Grey and that we have a lot to catch up on.
*I received an Advanced Copy of this book through Netgalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.