Merritt & Blunt #2
Two books in, this has already become a favorite series. Everything about this series sparkles – the characters, the storytelling, and the setting. The two central characters are 60 something Aubrey Merritt, a world-renowned private investigator, and her young, green, recently married assistant, Olivia Blunt (who, it must be said, does the lion’s share of the work). Blunt is in training to become a detective but so far Merritt is a bit scornful of her talents. She is eager, thorough, and good at research, however, and she arrives at the solution at *almost* the same time Aubrey does.
In this adventure, the two women are headed to Santa Fe to meet up for Merritt’s 40 year reunion with her Sigma Delta Tau sisters. Merritt had no intention of going (despite Blunt’s efforts in this direction) but there’s a plea for help from her hostess’s husband, as well as the fact that the hostess – retired Brigadier General Joan Battersea – is the one person Merritt wouldn’t mind seeing again. Merritt despises emotion and sentiment as they impede logic, but when Joan’s husband says there’s a threat to Joan’s life Merritt relents, and she and Blunt are on a plane almost before they have time to pack.
When they arrive, Joan insists the threat is nonsense, but her husband, showing the two investigators a death threat scrawled on the back of a reunion invitation, insists his wife take it seriously. Then the rest of the women arrive, indeed bearing grudges (in one case, an absolute doozy). All of them are staying at Joan’s spacious desert estate and Blunt is reunited with her childhood fear of snakes and a new one is added: scorpions. Its not long before the worst occurs and Merritt and Blunt switch into full on detective mode.
They have a hard time protecting Joan who is stubborn and sure of being able to take care of herself (she was a Brigadier General, after all) but the two detectives prevail in their insistence on her safety. They continue to investigate despite a sheriff who jumps to an obvious conclusion and arrests someone the two women feel is probably innocent. After a few other incidents – one involving, oh the horror, scorpions – the two edge toward a solution, despite Blunt’s lack of sleep, nourishment, and annoyingly ignoring her new husband’s pleas to look at the apartment links he keeps sending her as he tries to find them a new place in ultra competitive New York City.
What makes this book sparkle is the prickly relationship between Merrritt and Blunt, which absolutely has a Holmes and Watson feel to it, and the characters who surround them and make up the stories. In this outing the ageing sorority members who remember quite well the grudges and slights forty years past are a great cast of characters. The desert setting, so foreign to Blunt (who narrates the story) comes to life and assumes the part of a character in the proceedings.
The mystery part and the solution to it was clever and I enjoyed the traditional summing up by the two detectives at the end, which of course also reveals the killer. I like that author Tully utilizes traditional tropes but makes this form her own, by obviously updating it and having the assistant be so young she’s the guide for what’s occurring in the modern world, something Merritt doesn’t fully understand and often has contempt for. They have the cooperation of the police but they, like many, many other fictional detectives, are professionals solving crime – Merritt’s standing alone gives them agency to investigate. She’s as famous as Poirot or Holmes were in their day. The formula just works. I enjoy the company of these two women, I like the way Tully tells a story, and I enjoyed plunging into the swirl of drama that was a class reunion. — Robin Agnew