To Play the Fool

Laurie R. King

I really like the other series by this author with Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes. This is a modern day series with Kate/Casey (the author can't seem to decide) Martinelli who is a gay cop near San Francisco. The characters are good, the plots are good, but something about the books seems to stop you from getting very involved with the story. I think that the problem is Laurie King is a more "literary" mystery writer, so the mystery becomes secondary and eventually the reader stops caring if it gets solved or not. Anyway, this is the second in the series (the first was A Grave Talent). Good but not great.