When you want to be a great detective, you should learn from the world’s greatest detective. Olivia is an aspiring detective toiling away as an assistant for the most awesome Aubrey. The dynamic of mentor/mentee was well done and Tully gets the reader right into the relationship and the basis for the mystery to come.
The death of a big bucks socialite at her birthday party is quickly ruled a suicide and Aubrey agrees, but Olivia has her doubts. Can she put the clues together and solve the murder? It’s a cozy so of course she can!
The actual murder was easy to solve-for once I figured it out before the characters! It was fun but also frustrating. My main problems with the book were the characters and the dialogue. There were too many people in this book. I spent so much time flipping back and forth trying to remember who was who; way too many people to keep track of; I could see after I finished the book, what the author was going for in terms of red herrings and misdirection but it needed editing.
Also needing the big red pen of an editor was the dialogue. The characters didn’t speak like real people, everything was choppy and ran on and on. Much like the way I write! I do get it, dialogue is hard. Real people talk differently than characters on a page. It’s a tough thing to nail and in places it flowed really well.
Overall this was a good book and apparently the first in a new series. I will read the next one because there were some good bones in the story and Olivia and Aubrey are interesting characters-just hope author Tully trims the fat and tightens up the plot next time. 4 stars. I was given a copy (thank you NetGalley!) to read and share my thoughts.