FIRST GEAR

In Lee’s debut novel, Texas small-business owner Sadie Hawkins gets entangled in a murder mystery.

As the story opens, Sadie is struggling to keep her moving business, Hawkins Freight, afloat with the help of her older brother, Blaine. They’re swamped with bills and in dire need of clients. When antiques dealer Lionel Stanton hires Sadie to transport a mummy, among other things, from Houston to Pampa, Texas, she leaps at the opportunity. But what starts out as a seemingly harmless transaction quickly embroils the woman in a mystery when she delivers the freight to a location where no one’s ever heard of Stanton. It turns out that the sarcophagus does contain a dead body, but it’s much more recently deceased. Sadie soon meets the items’ real caretaker, Jeffrey Rogers, who accuses her of theft; she’s also arrested on suspicion of murder. Desperate to clear her name and prove her innocence, Sadie elicits the help of her ex-husband, Clayton Bellows, and Will, a hacker with a kind heart, to get to the bottom of the mystery. Sadie is a tough but lovable character who’s beholden to no one and takes care of herself; she tells readers early on that “what I wanted was not to be tied down and especially hemmed in.” Endearing expressions such as “Holy Hannah” might make it easy for some readers to write her off as merely quirky, but Lee effectively underscores Sadie’s mental and physical strength in several altercations, as when she confronts a man who attacked a member of her family. As a result, this novel is a propulsive, fun read even if the sheer number of scrapes that Sadie survives can feel unbelievable at times.

A brisk, enjoyable tale of a resourceful amateur investigator.