Rachel E. Carr

In short order, Hope Hadley wraps up the shooting on the last episode of her long-running, newly-cancelled tv show, The Sassy Sleuth, has her boyfriend of the past year dump her for an actress half her age, and, entirely too early the next morning, is informed by the police that said ex-boyfriend, Trent Harper, has been murdered and she is a suspect.

She has no alibi for the one-hour time frame within which he was murdered, because she skipped the wrap party.

When she can't convince police Detective Noble to immediately rule her out a suspect, she concludes she has no alternative but to clear herself by finding the real killer. That this could be dangerous is barely noted in passing.

What follows is just silly, and not in what appears to be an intentional way. Hope asks obvious questions of obvious suspects, is frustrated and annoyed that everyone she questions quickly becomes hostile, and doesn't as far as I can tell uncover anything the quite competent and intelligent Detective Noble wouldn't have found out on his own, much more efficiently and safely. I stand by this conclusion even though he is presented as being impressed by her different perspective and valuable insight, at the end. It just isn't plausible.

Light, entertaining, short mystery story, that may annoy the heck out of you if you like your mysteries to be plausible and reasonably intelligent in how the investigation proceeds.

Not recommended, though I wouldn't run away from it if you have a couple of hours to kill.

I honestly don't remember if I bought this audiobook, or if I got it free as part of a promotion of some kind. In any case, I'm reviewing it voluntarily.… (more)