Double Whammy (Davis Way Crime Caper, #1)

by Gretchen Archer

[tellemonstar]

Cross-posted at Book Reviews with the Blogmonstar
My first words, when finishing Double Whammy was ‘hmm’. The storyline was pretty good, once it actually got up and rolling, but it took a while.

I enjoyed the premise behind this one. Security detail for a casino (Again, a cosy mystery main character with an actual purpose for being near the crime scenes/investigating the crimes.) Going undercover and figuring out some sort of crime in the casino. Davis, when not being crazypants, was a pretty smart heroine with a knack for thinking like a criminal might.

However, and this is what took me so long to get into Double Whammy, Davis is a ditz and also neurotic as heck. I had a really hard time connecting with her, because it felt like she was on red cordial and way too much caffeine for the whole book. It made her somewhat unreliable as a narrator, because her focus would often be pulled somewhere else that wasn’t necessarily relevant to the storyline. (ie. Bradley, her boss’ hair, to mention a few things). Other than that it wasn’t a bad book, once I got into it. Although I did have a few issues.

Issues: I didn’t like how Davis completely invaded Bradley’s privacy by reading letters and journals she found by digging in his wardrobe and actually hunting for them. He wasn’t the target she was supposed to be studying. She’s basically a stalker, and it didn’t really help the plot at all. It felt to me like an attempt at ‘Let’s make Davis more quirky!!!’ It just goes to my theory that she is completely freakin’ nuts.

Speaking of Bradley, after the whole jail thing – which was a bit confusing, but more on that in a minute – he had David out of jail and back in his apartment (she was renting it for 6 months while he was away) for maybe 6 or 7 hours and then was all ‘let’s bang out here on the patio while your dad sleeps in my bed not 20 metres away’. Then they lost their clothes in a lot of other places, more frequently then newlyweds on their honeymoon. It was a bit much to take.

The Double Whammy game was really hard to understand and I’m still not sure exactly how it works. The jackpot parts I got, that was easy, and the whole power surge parts, but other than that I was completely confused. Even when the old ladies were explaining the game to Davis, I was still “how does this thing work?’ I guess I am just not meant to understand poker machines.

All that said, I would probably give the next book a go, because the actual mystery part of the plot was really intriguing and I didn’t see parts of it before they were announced. I worked out some of the mystery, but not all of it, which is nice, because I hate guessing whodunnit in the first few chapters.