Nichols, Judy: Caviar Dreams

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Struggling artist Lisa Watson and her friend Debbie Pratt have an evening of junk food and videos planned, homely pleasures intended to ease Lisa's recent professional disappointments. But their girls' night in proves to have unpleasant--indeed fatal--consequences. At the seedy video store Lisa drags her friend to they encounter con man Derek Grayson, who gets to work at once chatting up Debbie. She, it turns out, is just what Derek is looking for in a woman: dumpy but financially comfortable, and needy enough to fall hard for his pretty boy looks and smarmy charm. Derek quickly sets about moving in with Debbie and maxing out her credit cards, while at the same time working on his Big Score. He insinuates himself into the life of Cincinnati's most eligible bachelor, Robert Helton, the CEO of Helton International and a closeted homosexual so afraid of being outed that he's a perfect candidate for blackmail. When eventually Lisa crosses Helton's path, she becomes aware only belatedly of their mutual acquaintance with Debbie and Derek.

I was, I must say, very pleasantly surprised by this book. It's released by a small Canadian POD publisher, and it has the somewhat amateurish look of a self-published book. I was worried I'd encounter stilted prose and at best a merely adequate story. Instead what I got was a great read. The book is well written and the characters nicely developed. The plot definitely held my interest. It's in fact downright gripping in parts. There were quite a few small errors in the text that a careful editor would have caught, but nothing important enough to detract from my enjoyment of the book. Caviar Dreams is a very readable cozy--a mystery in the Columbo tradition in that we know whodunit from the get-go and follow the characters' solution of the crime. Definitely recommended. This one deserves a wider readership.