annieb123's Review of Suburban Dicks

by Fabian Nicieza

*A finalist for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel*

*A finalist for the Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel*

From the cocreator of Deadpool comes a highly entertaining debut featuring two unlikely and unforgettable amateur sleuths. An engrossing murder mystery full of skewering social commentary, Suburban Dicks examines the racial tensions exposed in a New Jersey suburb after the murder of a gas station attendant.

Andie Stern thought she'd solved her final homicide. Once a budding FBI profiler, she gave up her career to raise her four (soon to be five) children in West Windsor, New Jersey. But one day, between soccer games, recitals, and trips to the local pool, a very pregnant Andie pulls into a gas station--and stumbles across a murder scene. An attendant has been killed, and the local cops are in over their heads. Suddenly, Andie is obsessed with the case, and back on the trail of a killer, this time with kids in tow.

She soon crosses paths with disgraced local journalist Kenneth Lee, who also has everything to prove in solving the case. A string of unusual occurrences--and, eventually, body parts--surface around town, and Andie and Kenneth uncover simmering racial tensions and a decades-old conspiracy. Hilarious, insightful, and a killer whodunit, Suburban Dicks is the one-of-a-kind mystery that readers will not be able to stop talking about.

Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Suburban Dicks is a superbly grimly acerbically funny mystery by Fabian Nicieza. Released 22nd June 2021 by Penguin Random House on their G.P. Putnam's Sons imprint, it's 400 pages and is available in hardcover, paperback, audio, and ebook formats.

A lot of people whose jobs rely on the written word wrongly consider crime fiction, well, low hanging fruit. It's not quite quite they say, it's often outrè, badly written (they say), well, this author would beg to differ. This is a genuinely funny and sharply wry procedural with a complex plot and an genuinely nuanced and satisfying denouement and resolution. Sometimes the humor reminded me faintly of Ben Aaronovitch or Fowler's Bryant & May books with a subtle complexity reminiscent of the more cerebral and classic Americans like Stout and Woolrich.

The word that keeps popping up in my head is clever. This is a cleverly constructed puzzle. The main character is hysterically deadpan-funny but also really really clever. She's head-and-shoulders smarter than most of the rest of the people in the room, whatever room she's in at the moment, but she's not above making slyly sarcastic cracks which often fly above the heads of the people she's talking to. She teases apart the hidden motives and solution to the crimes and does it between shuttling her kids to soccer practice, homework, and being heavily pregnant.

This is a standalone, but I sincerely hope it's the first in a long long series. Four and a half stars. I highly recommend it to folks who enjoy a bit of snark with their murder mysteries.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Suburban Dicks

by Fabian Nicieza

Reviewed by annieb123 on Dec 14, 2021

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