Reviewer: Connie Payne
Title: Knock Off - 1st in the F.A.T. Mystery Series
Author: Rhonda Pollero
Publisher: Kensington
ISBN: 0-7582-1557-6
Release Date: March 2007
Genre/Sub-genre: Mystery Romance
Year/Setting: Present Day - Florida
Overall rating: 4.75
Sexual Content Rating: Sensual/Sexual (briefly - innuendo)
Language (Profanity) Content Rating: Moderate
Violent Content Rating: Negligible/Minimal
Rhonda's Website: www.rhondapollero.com
Finley Anderson Tanner is a paralegal. She works solely to support her habits, which are coffee and serious discount (designer clothes) shopping.
She’s turned her job into a cushy position, coming in late, long lunches, leaving early, shopping E-bay (merely a sideline habit). Until her boss dumps a client, Mrs. Stacy Evans, in her lap to deal with. It’s not long before Finley starts to realize this grief stricken widow is a few coffee beans shy of an espresso. She believes, against all the reports, that her husband was murdered, and she fully expects Finley to investigate.
Warned to accommodate Mrs. Evans, but not to dig too much, Finley reluctantly gets to work. Yet where does she begin? She’s never done anything like this before and it shows. Enter Liam McGarrity, an investigator used by the firm. He gives her some tips, though isn’t very much help at first. But (boyfriend aside) he is nice to look at and drool over.
Finley really would rather tell the neurotic widow she’s nuts and walk away since this investigation has turned her well-ordered office upside down. Just in case you’re skeptical about that, you should know that Finley actually goes in to the office early, works through lunch, takes work home, and also takes some initiative. And in doing so she unearths the puzzle of all puzzles.
Time begins to run out as Finley gathers the clues and struggles to put them together before anyone else is murdered. Yes, she’s convinced its murder, which puts her job and her life in jeopardy!
Finley is great fun, though she can have a bit of a mouth on her. She is surrounded by a great ensemble of best friends, family, and backstabbing co-workers, all of whom are very helpful in various stages of her investigations. And it only makes the story that much more fun.
A disappointment for me was the ending. There was such a build up through the well thought out maze of clues Finley dug up that it seemed to me the book ended in a rush. Was it my desire for the book not to end? Perhaps.
Rhonda Pollero has penned a winner with Knock Off. It’s a fabulous start to a new mystery series! Amazing twists and turns are woven between humor, fashion, and romance. A sharp combination guaranteed to make Finley an instant hit.
Connie
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