THUGS AND KISSES
by Sue Ann Jaffarian
A missing boss and a dead classmate upset Odelia Grey’s delicately balanced social life.
Plus-sized paralegal Odelia Grey (The Curse of the Holy Pail, 2007, etc.) was supposed to go to her high school reunion with Greg Stevens, her official boyfriend. But paraplegic Greg has a cold, and the challenge of facing on her own the popular kids who tormented her as a teenager is too much. So she enlists towering Newport Beach detective Devin Frye to squire her. It doesn’t take much arm-twisting, since Dev’s crush on her is as massive as he is. There’s nothing wrong with a police escort, especially when Donny Oliver—most popular and meanest of Odelia’s class—gets snuffed out mid-waltz. Nor is Dev a bad sounding board when Mike Steele, the irascible lawyer whom Carl Yates of Wallace, Boer, Brown, and Yates counts on her to manage, disappears. When Yates gives Odelia free rein to investigate, she alternates between interviewing Steele’s circle, including pal Tim Weber of rival firm Goldberg-Rawlings, ex-wife Karen Meek and a few former classmates. But Dev, Greg and even best friend Zee Washington warn her to steer clear of them all, pitting her sleuthing instincts against everyone she cares about.
Snappy dialogue, but a convoluted and improbable plot.