A PERILOUS PAL

The risks mount as the oddball business venture Emma Westlake launched in A Plus One for Murder (2021) picks up steam.

It took a lot of guts, some ingenuity, and a little bit of prodding from her octogenarian pal, Dottie Adler, but it looks like A Friend for Hire, Emma’s service for folks who need someone to offer unconditional support in their hour of need, is going to be a decent earner after all. In addition to Dottie, who still pays Emma for having tea with her once a week, there are three other clients and a fourth in the works. But Kim Felder, Emma’s newest paying friend, comes with a lot of baggage. She’s sad and lonely because now that her kids are grown, she has no one who needs her. But she’s also really, really angry because her husband dumped her for his thin, blond secretary. Emma encourages Kim to vent her frustrations on paper, writing down all the things she’d like to do to her ex. Which might be good psychology but turns out to be terrible advice from a legal standpoint, since once someone actually does strangle that old cheat Roger, the list provides Deputy Jack Riordan ample evidence to arrest Kim. Now Emma has two problems: First, her client is in the hoosegow, and second, she’s fighting with Jack just as their relationship is moving from the “friends” to the “dating” column. There’s only one way to fix this mess, and it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out who has to crack this case.

A novel hook introduces an otherwise standard cozy.