DRIVEN TO INK - Karen Olson

First line: "When Sylvia and Bernie came back from That's Amore Drive-Through Wedding Chapel with my car, it would've been nice if they'd taken the body out of the trunk."

Brett Kavanaugh returns and so does death in Las Vegas. This time, Brett finds a corpse in her car. The same car she leant Jeff Coleman’s mother, Sylvia, for her wedding. However, Sylvia and her new husband are M.I.A. The murder investigation leads Brett and Jeff to a Vegas chapel, complete with Dean Martin impersonators, and a medical research lab. It also leads them straight into a utility pole. The closer they get to finding the murderer, the closer they get to their own funerals.

This series has remained fun and entertaining. Olson continues to create unique characters befitting her Vegas setting. And the Painted Lady staff of misfits is better than ever. In DRIVEN TO INK she brings in the entertainment business coupled with the “quickie marriage” scene Vegas is so well known for. She also continues to make use of her setting, letting the glitz and glamor show through on each page.

The plot of DRIVEN TO INK is creative and fun, but there is a questionable element that arises near the end. It’s not enough to ruin the entire book, it simply requires the reader to let go of reality a bit and just enjoy.

The humor is well crafted as Olson illustrates the absurdity of human behavior, viewed through her eccentric protagonist’s eyes. In DRIVEN TO INK some of that humor includes the Adkins Diet craze, the oxygen bars and of course the drive-through wedding chapels.

As with the two books before it, DRIVEN TO INK is a creatively witty mystery with all the razzle dazzle of its setting.

DRIVEN TO INK is available as a mass market paperback (ISBN: 978-0-451-23157-4) from Obsidian.