Finlay Donovan is Killing It

 

I loved this book. It was hysterical. It reminded me a lot of the early Stephanie Plum books, where Stephanie would just get into these crazy mix-ups. Finlay is very similar. 

Finlay is a single mom of two whose soon to be ex-husband is engaged to Theresa, a real estate agent. Theresa and Steven are not making it easy on Finn. She's up to her eyeballs in bills and trying to take care of two little kids while working on her book. She's way, way past her deadline, as her agent keeps reminding her. Finlay goes to a local Panera to meet her agent to discuss pushing back the deadline or perhaps getting a little more advance money, and the answer to both is a hard "no". When Finlay gets home she discovers a note in her diaper bag with a phone number on it. Curious, she calls and talks to Patricia, who was sitting next to her at Panera and overheard her conversation with her agent. Patricia would like to hire Finlay to murder her husband, Harris. 

Finlay is shocked and tries to explain to Patricia that she misunderstood the conversation: she didn't mean *that* kind of contract. But Patricia is stubborn and insists Finlay can do it, and what's more is she'll pay: $50,000. 

Curious as to why Patricia would want her husband dead, Finlay goes out to a bar in disguise and sees Harris in action. When he slips a roofie in his date's drink, Finlay waylays her in the restroom, "accidentally" spills a drink on her, then joins Harris and manages to switch cocktails, getting him to drink the drugged one. She gets him out of the bar and into the back of her van before he passes out, but now what? Not sure what else to do, she takes him home. She leaves him in the back of the van while she goes upstairs to change and when she returns, he's dead: choked on the exhaust fumes because she left the van running and the garage door is closed. Only...she didn't close it. Someone else killed Harris. 

I don't want to recap the whole thing, but as you can imagine, it spirals from there. Finlay gets deeper and deeper into the mess she created and can't figure a way out. It doesn't help that when she writes about what happened (using fake names, of course) and sends it to her agent, she loves it and is able to sell it for a $150,000 advance. A hot cop plus a hot bartender/law student and a terrific nanny/accountant sidekick round out the cast of characters. I'm excited there's a sequel. Too much fun.