Finlay Donovan Knocks ’Em Dead

Cosimano (Finlay Donovan Is Killing It) is back with more zany antics featuring romantic-suspense novelist Finlay Donovan. This book picks up where the first one ended. On a chatroom of housewives, someone offers up $100 grand to kill Steven, Finlay’s ex-husband. Finlay is determined to cancel that contract. If she didn’t have her faithful nanny, Vero, to keep her on the straight and narrow, she might end up at the wrong end of a gun. Angela Dawes is the perfect narrator because of her believability as Finlay. She sounds like a mid-40s divorcée just barely keeping it together, while juggling kids, bills, and hit men. When she lowers her voice for the male characters, it keeps them distinguishable. She makes judicious use of accents. Her cadence is on target; the story flows from one catastrophe into another with barely a pause, and so does Dawes. This book doesn’t stand alone. It relies heavily on the events of book one, going into only minor details to inform the uninitiated.