This crime-com is such a zany, fun, irreverent ride of entertainment that we’re totally signing up for the next instalment. Think: the absurd, fun impossibility of Ruthless People marrying the stylish heists of If Tomorrow Comes and here is the child of that union.
Synopsis-wise, the blurb is perfect, so we’re just going with it here.
“Welcome to the National Recovery Bureau, where your assets are as sacred as God’s holy word.”
Vera “Nick” Nicholson is an overtaxed and underpaid attorney wasting away on the bottom rung of the gilded ladder at Turner, Witherspoon, Anders, and Tyler, PA in Winston-Salem, NC. When a high-priced luxury car belonging to one of the firm’s top clients goes missing, Nick gets saddled with the unenviable job of recovering the vehicle—and its mysterious contents—without involving the cops. Enter Fast Eddie and his quirky band of misfits at The National Recovery Bureau, a repo agency located in a sleepy town called K-Vegas.
When Nick is unceremoniously furloughed from TWAT, she throws caution to the wind and signs on to become the newest agent of the NRB, teaming up with moonlighting third-grade schoolteacher, Frances “Frankie” Stohler. Frankie’s mortician father and beautician mother are stalwarts of the Winston-Salem community—so it’s no surprise that everyone across three counties has some connection to her family. What is surprising, however, is the Slim Jim Frankie carries in her purse and her preternatural talent for jacking cars.
Nick and Frankie’s stumbling entrée into the surreal world of asset recovery takes them on a hilarious, fast-paced and mind-bending journey across the back roads and byways of the Tar Heel state, setting into motion a chain of misadventures that lead them both toward financial independence, cataclysmic legal jeopardy, and the discovery that true love can sometimes lurk in the most unlikely places.
But the real magic is in the writing and the bunch of wacky characters. Much like McMan’s Jericho, there are a large number of excellently developed secondary characters in this one too. Our top favourites are Antigone, Carol Jenkins and Frankie’s Hermoine-like purse.
Frankie (small sigh) is awesome. So awesome. Bright, peppy, enthusiastic, enterprising, funny…sexy. We so love her response to vague statements:
“I think want to kiss you.”
“When will you be sure?”
And
“…I’d think you were flirting with me.”
“You mean you’re not sure? I must not be doing it right.”
Nick is the opposite of Frankie. A Negative Nervous Nelly and quite a downer in the whole proceeding. The book is written in first person from Nick’s PoV, so there way too much of her, but everything and everyone else is just so great that Nick was rescued and she also floated on the high fun-crest of this delightful book.
There is attraction between Frankie and Nick, but the romance is woven into the narrative rather than the narrative being woven around the romance. And it works perfectly.
This is most definitely amongst the ten funniest sit-com books we’ve read and in the top three crime-coms.
