Malicious Mischief (Rylie Keyes)

by Marianne Harden

[Angie]

I received an ARC through NetGalley.

I've been wanting to give mysteries another try after enjoying the first (and only) one I read a couple of years ago, so I decided to pick up Malicious Mischief. We're introduced to twenty-four year old wannabe PI, Rylie Tabitha Keyes, as she's driving some trash to be incinerated for her boss. Unfortunately, Riley doesn't make it. She's run off the road by a truck and then a dead body falls out of the back of her van. It's one of the men from the retirement home where she works as a chauffeur. Of course, Riley is immediately a suspect, but we know she didn't do it. And now she wants to put her amateur sleuthing skills to work and prove that she has what it takes to solve this case. Otto Wiener wasn't well-liked, so Riley has her work cut out for her, since just about anyone could be the murderer. But why would they want to frame her?

I immediately liked Rylie. She's described as flakey, since she can't seem to hold down a job for any significant amount of time. But I saw her as more scatterbrained and naive than anything else. She makes a lot of dumb mistakes and misses the obvious, but her heart is in the right place. She just wants to help her grandfather keep their home, since he raised her and they're all each other has. I also enjoyed her best friend, Solo. He's definitely there for comic relief, as a big Samoan, gentle giant, with dreams of being in Cirque du Soleil. Malicious Mischief is jam packed full of colorful characters, in terms of both race and personality, so that was fun. There's just so darn many of them! Though I suppose that's a characteristic of the genre, since the author needs to throw us off the trail of the real murderer.

The main thing that kept me from really enjoying Malicious Mischief was the humor. I struggle with humor in general, but the author's humor and what I find funny really didn't match up. That opening chapter, which I assume was suppose to illicit some chuckles, just seemed over the top to me. I can see how others may have found it silly or funny, but it seemed too slapstick for my liking. There are definitely some funny parts scattered throughout, but I mostly kept a straight face and didn't have much fun. I kept reading for the sake of solving the mystery, which I never did, but Rylie managed to! Go, Rylie!

In the end, Malicious Mischief just wasn't the story for me. I did really enjoy some of the characters and the mystery stumped me, but it was just kind of blah. The ending was also really abrupt, and I'm not sure if that's the norm for mysteries or not, since this is only my second. Of course, Rylie lays out all of her evidence, discovers the murderer and pins down their motives. But then there's some unrelated and completely random drama that ends by the next page, and what I'm guessing is the start of the series' romance. It was just a lot at once to end so abruptly.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.