Getting Lucky Offers Murder Over Easy
Robyn Guthrie is a post-forty, single freelance writer whose life is complicated by a mother with increasing dementia, a boyfriend who thinks he should date other women because he may want children (Robyn doesn’t), and an assignment in which she’s not particularly interested for a local paper. She is also the central character in Getting Lucky by DC Brod, a green murder mystery.
Robyn gets the unappealing assignment—coverage of a new “green” housing development in which moderately-priced duplexes, both environmentally- and family-friendly, are being built—when the reporter who was covering it is struck by a car and dies. Although the reporter’s death is classified as a hit and run, Robyn starts to uncover information that causes her to wonder if the young woman had been murdered deliberately. As if that wasn’t enough to think about, her boyfriend is listening to his biological clock ticking and her seriously-irritating-and-sometimes-“hazy” mother decides it would be an excellent idea for she and Robyn to buy a house together.
Soon Robyn is unhappily reunited with a high school nemesis, followed by a menacing man in a Mini Cooper, visiting a psychic with her mother to see what her dead father thinks about them moving in together, moving a corpse, and mixing with mobsters. Brod’s breezy style unites these elements into a fast moving story that isn’t too violent or dark. In creating Robyn, she’s delivered a character to whom women can relate: she’s not more beautiful than we are, she doesn’t dress better than we do, she doesn’t live in a nicer place than we, and she can’t always get people to take her seriously. The one thing that Robyn may have that we don’t is unflagging luck.
Getting Lucky is an amusing look into real estate, relationships, crime, values, and compromises. As we get deeper into the story, we suspect DC Brod is going to give us something our fairy godmothers failed to deliver—“happily ever after.” While not all the characters get to ride happily into the sunset (or ride anywhere at all), Getting Lucky is a satisfying read that leaves us wishing for the further adventures of Robyn Guthrie. (Publication: December 18, 2011).
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