Before the last two feet of snow shut me in forever, I had
got my favorite lamp fixed and found a good throw for my one-and-a-half
chair. (This is a chair that
allows a short person - me - to scrunch sideways in perfect cocoon comfort.) I
had my Kindle and a new book to review:
The Mystery of Mercy Close by
Marian Keyes a bestselling Irish author.
The words Mercy Close had already zapped me with a yen to sell
everything and move to the Cotswolds because who doesn’t want to live in a
thatched roof cottage and send out address cards marked 43 Mercy Close. Well, Mark Zuckerberg probably doesn’t.
Btw the book is set in Ireland not the UK I keep thinking it’s still 1899 in Ireland but
apparently, they also have cell phones and the Internet.
The best thing I can ever say about a book is that I want to
continue reading it more than I want to do most other things (that includes
watching Shark Tank.) The next best thing I can say is that I
can read it on the elliptical machine and not be aware that almost an hour has
slipped by. This was mostly true
of this funny, noir in a good way, noir in a bad way P.I. driven missing person
mystery. Helen Walsh, P.I. is a
long list of contradictions: suicidal but competitive, despises phrases like “good to go” but has a soft spot for
Michael Bublé and his “chunky thighs.” (I went immediately to U-tube and
listened to Bublé sing The Best Is Yet To
Come and it put me in a good mood.)
Helen is suffering from a mental malady of unknown origins
and resistant to solutions. (Aren’t we all?) She can’t sleep.
She can’t eat anything except handfuls of Cheerios and has twice in the
past (in a clumsy way) tried to
commit suicide. Just as she’s entering a good period the economy brings her
down. She loses her flat and her
clients and has to limp back to her old bedroom in her parents’ house. To the
rescue comes her ex, Jay Parker, a promoter who is producing a reunion of the boyband
Laddz and needs her to find one of the Laddz who has gone missing. Helen has a
past with Jay that did not end well but he’s offering cash and a job. Helen
wants oblivion but remains engaged by her work ethic and a developing simpatico
for the missing Ladzz. The fun of this book is not so much in the mystery but
in the reveal of the main character, a funny albeit cranky survivor
who is just barely holding on but whose thought process remains reliably
interesting.
My quibble with The
Mystery of Mercy Close is the lengthy multi-page acknowledgements up
front. We don’t know these people,
we don’t care how much help they were to the author. We want to dive into Chapter One straight away. (After
reading the words bum for booty and boot for car trunk and petrol for gas, I’m
already saying straight away for right away like a wannabe Brit.)
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