Domestic Partners in Crime #2
I have always insisted I don’t read fantasy novels, but I actually do, because I read cozy mysteries. While the stories themselves are set in more than recognizable places, the behavior of the amateur sleuths in most of them enters the realm of the fantastical. I could care less. The world is a hard cold place, and a cozy novel provides respite, comfort, and very often laughs. Sign me up! The best of them have characters that have emotional truth and often seem very much like our own friends and neighbors, with the added super power of solving crimes.
Frank Polito’s delectable series features two as yet unmarried partners, JP Broadway and PJ Penwell, who star together on an “HDTV” show called – Domestic Partners. Like everything in this book, this is all reality adjacent – while the book is set in Royal Heights, Michigan, it sounds awfully like Royal Oak; Meadow Lark playhouse might be recognizable to the southeast Michigander as Meadow Brook; and of course, the TV show described sounds very much like one of my favorite HGTV shows, Bargain Block.
There are so many fun southeast Michigan references, from bumpy cake to Creamora to the perfectly named Detective Paczki (the treat consumed by Michiganders on Fat Tuesday) that I was at first having a hard time focusing on the plot, but one of the great things about cozy mysteries are – stories! Cozy writers are wonderful storytellers, and Polito is no exception.
The set up: PJ’s first play is being produced at the Royal Heights playhouse. He’s thrilled but, following Murphy’s Law, everything that can go wrong, does. The director, who has something of a “name” in the theater world (or at least the Southeast Michigan theater world) turns out to be an unbearable diva, so unpleasant that one of the leading men quits the show a mere two weeks before opening night. The other great thing about cozies: if one of the characters is completely awful, you can bet they are going to be murdered, and that is indeed what happens to the ill-fated director.
The domestic partners jump into sleuthing mode, interviewing everyone they can think of and coming up with many dead ends while also uncovering a few facts that begin to form a clear picture of how the director met his end. The domestic partners themselves are also looking for a new house to renovate for their TV show while play rehearsals are going on, as well as adopting a new dog and trying to integrate him into their already one dog household. They are nice men who truly seem to care for one another, and I feel like PJ’s mom, who has already bought a dress: plan your wedding, guys!
This was a really fun, fast paced read. I loved the characters, I loved the theater setting as well as the home reno tips, and the dogs are adorable. As a southeast Michigan girl, I loved the nicely detailed Detroit area setting. This is a terrific new series. — Robin Agnew