The tagline on the front of this book reckons we are being introduced to a new, kick-arse crime fighter for fans of Janet Evanovich and I have to say I was pretty impressed with the arse-kicking abilities of the main character.
I was a late-arrival in the Janet Evanovich fan camp, not reading any of her books until Metro Girl in 2005, the first of her Alex Barnaby novels.
In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I hunted out the first couple of her Stephanie Plum novels that everyone on the Trade Me message board had been raving about, only to be disappointed. I just couldn’t get into them.
Given that fact, I was a bit worried by that front cover tagline but was relieved to find this had more of an Alex Barnaby feel that a Stephanie Plum touch.
The heroine of the piece is Tara Sharp, a Holden Monaro-driving Aussie chick who has a knack for reading people, which makes her quite handy as an investigator.
After getting tangled up with a dodgy lawyer, Tara gets pulled into some underworld dealings and ends up having to run for her life.
This has plenty of humour, real people and action galore.
I’m looking forward to the next one in the series.
While this is the first novel of this type for the author, it’s worth noting that Marianne Delacourt is the pseudonym of successful Australian sci-fi/fantasy author Marianne de Pierres.