Unsolicited

Julie Kaewert

Julie Kaewert's Booklovers mysteries took a while to make it to this side of the pond, but I am one of a growing number who are glad they finally made it, even if they did take so long. Unsolicited, the first of them, spends (as do most first-in-a-series books) a bit much time introducing us to characters and their complex relationships, but that rarely gets in the way of a cracking mystery.

While it's inaccurate to call this a cozy (the narrator is threatened with death a bit often for that), "hardboiled" is about the last word one would use to describe Alex Plumtree, the book's hero. He's thin, bespectacled, quite bookish (which shouldn't be surprising, given that he runs Plumtree Press), and an amateur at the whole roughing-people-up thing, to be sure. However, he finds himself forced into it when, at a press party, he narrowly dodges a huge roll of printing paper that comes crashing down from a ceiling, narrowly missing him and killing a friend of his who happens to be a noted book critic. Alex has himself a murder to solve, but things, of course, get far more complex when Alex begins to suspect that the critic's murder has to do with the next book coming from Plumtree Press, the sequel to a runaway bestselling novel by an author so anonymous even Alex has no idea who he is. Add to this his longtime and continually frustrating relationship with an American investment banker, and you've got the makings for a fun mystery.

It does its job quite well (though in the end we find ourselves with the Least Likely Suspect rule hanging over our heads, proving once again that the journey is often more fun than the destination). There's some prose, especially towards the beginning, that probably could have done with a bit of stripping and sanding; the book's pace gets bogged down a few too many times in the particulars. Once it gets going, however, and finds its pace, there's quite a neat little mystery here. Fans of other authors who spend their time mooning over books will find this right up their alley.