Colt, Jennifer: The Butcher of Beverly Hills

Broadway Books © 2005, 357 pages [amazon]

In this series opener twin PI's Kerry and Terry McAfee (of "Double Indemnity Investigations") are hired by Beverly Hills socialite Lenore Richling--their great aunt's good buddy--to track down Lenore's boy-toy husband and the fistful of jewelry he's run off with. The case seems straightforward enough, but their client hasn't told the girls everything, in particular that her hubby's likely to be packing heat and that she herself has been flirting with blackmail. The twins' investigation winds up involving insurance fraud and medical malpractice, drug pushing and multiple murders among the wealthy and surgically reconstructed. Kerry and Terry tool around on their signature vehicle, a hot pink Harley, collecting clues, outrunning bad guys, and getting on one another's nerves: despite their identical DNA, the girls are polar opposites. Even-tempered Kerry, who narrates the story, is the stereotypical good girl, the high school valedictorian turned law-abiding detective. Terry, the more impetuous and aggressive of the two, has served time for possession. Their differences extend to their sexual preferences: Terry is a lesbian, while Kerry spends much of the book lusting after one of the policemen the girls butt heads with during their investigation, an apparently perfect example of the male of the species.

The book's tongue-in-cheekiness goes a bit too far at times, too, as when the girls' Aunt Reba responds with unrealistic insouciance to her son's ostensible coronary.The Butcher of Beverly Hills, as its vibrant cover suggests, is a breezy beach-read of a book. Jennifer Colt's protagonists exchange witty banter with one another and approach the dangers of their occupation with something less than complete seriousness. In fact, the twins, while likeable enough characters, come across as too amateurish to be quite credible as professional investigators. The book's tongue-in-cheekiness goes a bit too far at times, too, as when the girls' Aunt Reba responds with unrealistic insouciance to her son's ostensible coronary:

"Reba sighed again and turned around to pick up the phone, punching in 911. 'Hello? Reba Price-Slatherton here. Be a dear and send a cardiac unit to my address. Yes, that's correct. Well, I believe my son has had a massive heart attack. Thank you very much.'

"As Terry and I sat there open-mouthed, she whipped out an alligator checkbook and readied a Mont Blanc pen.

"'Now, how much do I owe you?'"

The scene is cute, but it doesn't work because the reader cannot forget that a concerned mother would not be so nonchalant in the face of her son's collapse. In a similarly distracting passage, Kerry unthinkingly bites the hand of the man standing next to her at a memorial service--the hunky policeman she's hot for but has not yet hooked up with--lest she erupt in inappropriate laughter. In both passages the characters' implausible behavior drags the reader's attention away from the author's fictional world.

The Butcher of Beverly Hills isn't perfect, but it's a decent light read that packs some clever turns of phrase. A good choice if you're up for something frothy and fun.

Tags: book reviews, books, Jennifer Colt, The Butcher of Beverly Hills