Death, Taxes, and Cheap Sunglasses (Tara Holloway, #8)

by Diane Kelly

IRS Special Agent Tara Holloway is hard at work, pursuing con artists posing as do-gooders. Between an arts foundation that pays astronomical sums for works of questionable value, an alleged animal rescue charity that collects species for canned hunts, and a fraudulent humanitarian group soliciting funds for natural disasters that never happened, Tara has her hands full. What's more, someone has been impersonating an IRS agent, tricking taxpayers into revealing their personal financial data, and stealing money from their accounts. As if these cases aren't trying enough, Tara seems to keep breaking or misplacing her sunglasses. But losing a pair of cheap sunglasses is nothing compared to the possibility of losing Nick. He's gone deep undercover as part of a joint task force, working with the DEA to bring down a dangerous drug cartel notorious for kidnapping and murder. Will Tara and Nick bring the bad guys to justice? Or will they become victims of the very people they've pursued?

• ISBN10: 125004832X
• ISBN13: 9781250048325
• Publish Date: 3 March 2015
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 23 September 2016
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: St Martin's Press
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

It's been awhile since I picked up a Tara Holloway novel, and I don't know why - they're really fun and better built than your average cozy.  Needing to read a book where the character had to be good with a gun was just the motivation I needed to get back into the series.   In this book Tara is investigating an email scam, a Facebook scam, and two non-profits that might not really be non-profits; one of these involved an animal sanctuary, and up-front, I skimmed a lot when this story line came forward, although the wrap up of it was awesome.  Running through the whole of the story is her boyfriend and best friend (an IRS and DEA agent respectively) going deep undercover against the Mexican drug cartel.     While Tara's investigations are relatively lightweight and suffuse the storyline with humour, the cartel storyline is not light.  Kelly has done her research and, while she has a tendency to overshare that research with readers sometimes, here it's relevant, timely and the perfect hook for setting the level of danger involved.  Tara contributes once or twice, but is mostly in the dark about what's going on until the end.  And the end is unbelievably tense for a cozy and the happy ending doesn't come without scars and baggage.   My biggest complaint about the book is the level of internal dialog the reader has to put up with as Tara agonises over Nick's safety and whether or not he's alive.  There was just a little too much of it and it became tedious.  Otherwise, a great read and I'm glad I already have the next one ready to go.