DANGEROUS WOMEN

A Washington, D.C., crime web is unraveled by an elderly sleuth who looks like Marple but acts like Marlowe.

Law clerks Robert Finley and Brooke Chaplin head back to Robert’s apartment after a highly competitive one-on-one basketball game and a congenial dinner at the Dubliner. Then an explosion on the stoop turns the friendly evening tragic. The perp is Ronald Drake, a scruffy thug who receives instructions by phone from an anonymous handler who texts him to get out of town. Robert, who worked for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Clarissa Baxter, is killed, and Brooke, the niece of Arlington homicide detective Frank Mancini, lands in a coma. Fortunately, Brooke rents a room from the 70-something Ethel Fiona Crestwater, who quickly jumps on the case. Significantly, Brooke’s laptop has gone missing. After introducing a daunting number of characters with complicated backstories in the opening chapters, de Castrique takes mercy on his readers, and the numerous layers and “surprise” reveals in the sinuous plot take a backseat to the charisma of savvy senior sleuth Ethel, who shrewdly sorts them all out. Ethel is consistently underestimated by virtually everyone except Mancini, who knows her history as a former FBI agent, and Jesse Cooper, a victim in Ethel’s debut (Secret Lives, 2022) and now an eager, wide-eyed protégé and reader stand-in. The duo has a delightful chemistry. When the initials BLM cause Jesse to wonder how Black Lives Matter relates to the case, the astute Ethel points out that the initials also stand for the Bureau of Land Management.

An appealing hybrid of cozy mystery and P.I. caper.