Deadly Does It, Abbi Waxman (Review by Stacie Champlin)
Rating: 3.5/5 Stars
The sequel to Abbi Waxman’s One Death at a Time, Deadly Does It, picks back up with the crime fighting duo Natasha Mason and Julia Mann. After meeting in the first book in AA, former film superstar Julia takes on the young, slightly misled Mason under her wing. As first Julia’s AA mentor, Mason then becomes her assistant, followed by her private investigator. After their crime solving skills catches a murderer in the first novel, the duo is back in action with more cases to solve.
After a fashion show where is literally rains large scale vegetable sculptures on the patrons, Mason and Julia help their new client, Alexis, figure out who sabotaged her show. This is not the first threat to Alexis who has been receiving threatening messages in the mail for weeks. As Mason’s AA mentor, Alexis has a past with alcohol abuse and has no idea what she did in the past to cause someone to come after her. Mason and Julia, with their help of some sidekicks (my favorite being Will, the uber researcher that goes on tangents frequently), must go back far into Alexis’ past and interview anyone who she might have wronged. They do this mostly legally, but you know, sometimes you need to cross a few boundaries to solve a crime. As Mason debates the next stage of her life after sobriety, her life comes under fire as the perpetrator starts targeting those close to Alexis.
The book is a good cozy mystery and provides some great humor. The banter between Julia and Mason reminds me of The Thursday Murder Club or the Finlay Donovan cast. I think the banter was a little much at the beginning of this book which felt forced, but as the story progressed, the fast-paced plot pushed the story along. This story hints of a romance brewing, and I would love to see that unfold more in the next book of the series. Overall, I love the Mann and Mason crime fighting duo!