A Fatal Groove

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.

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What’s A Fatal Groove About?

For the second time in the two months since she returned home, Juni Jessup finds a dead body. This time, she discovers the town’s mayor dead at his desk during the town’s biggest event—the Bluebonnet Festival.

It might just be all the True Crime podcasts Juni listens to and all the Police Procedural shows she watches, but Juni’s pretty sure he was poisoned from the evidence she sees. Sadly, the other thing she notices is that the mayor’s holding a coffee cup from her store in his hand—so it’s pretty likely that the source of the poison was the coffee her sister had poured him not that long ago.

Faster than you can say, “Jessica Fletcher,” Juni and her sisters are on the hunt for another killer to clear their store’s name.

The Bank Robbery

Decades ago, during this same festival, a bank in town was robbed while everyone was distracted by the festivities. The money has never been recovered, but it’s widely believed that the robbers buried it before they encountered the police. It’s now become a game during the festival for people to dig up a new plot of land each year to try to find the money. It’s like an Easter Egg Hunt for grownups, with less candy and more manual labor involved.

It turns out that the mayor and a few other people in town had turned this robbery into a hobby bordering on obsession, and the sisters can’t help but think that there’s a connection between the lengths the mayor and others were going to in order to figure out where the money is and his killing.

Texas

I’m pretty sure it was present in Vinyl Resting Place, but I was too busy getting to know everyone to really notice—but one thing I really appreciated this time was the way that Juni mused about Texas—the geography, the beauty, the flora, and the culture. She really missed her home state while living in Oregon—more than she realized—and now that she’s more settled back home, she can see all that she missed. Blacke does a great job of conveying that to the reader.

On the one hand, it’s hard to think that J. Todd Scott, Samantha Jayne Allen, and Attica Locke are describing the same state as Blacke is—and part of that has to do with the varied parts of the large state they’re describing, sure. But most of it has to do with the tone of their books—and once you adjust for that, they’re remarkably consistent and help readers who’ve never been there to get an idea of the place.

Still, all things considered, I’d rather live in Olivia Blacke’s Texas. At least Cedar River—it’s like Stars Hollow mixed with Bluebell, Alabama, but with better food (and better coffee).

A Small Confession

I imagine I’m going to be in the minority on this point, and most readers will shake their heads at me, but…I really didn’t care about the murder mystery. It was interesting enough, the red herrings were well-executed—as was the reveal and confrontation with the killer. But I thought the killer’s identity was pretty obvious, and nothing about that storyline really grabbed me. It happens sometimes.

But—and this is the important part—I didn’t care. I liked everything revolving around the murder mystery—particularly the long-unsolved mystery about the bank robbery. I enjoyed watching Juni and her sisters go about trying to solve things and everything else enough that it didn’t matter to me that the central story didn’t really click with me. I do think it says something about the world that Blacke is building here that I remained as invested as I did with that issue.

They Still Work

As I mentioned when I talked about the first book, the music-inspired punny drink names for their coffee counter are just perfect. They’re the kind of little touch that adds so much to a scene—you get an idea of the characters behind them if nothing else. Like the names of the stores and restaurants in The Good Place, they add a layer of enjoyment on top of everything else.

Blacke gives you just enough of them to keep you wanting more, but not so many that you roll your eyes at them. It’s a tricky balancing act, I’d imagine, but she pulls it off.

I’d say they’re the bit of whip cream on top of your specialty coffee drink to add just that nice finishing touch, but I can’t stand whip cream on my coffee. But you get the idea.

So, what did I think about A Fatal Groove?

I’m going on too long here…and there’s so much I haven’t talked about, for example:

• The love triangle—it's pretty tame and everything's out in the open (both guys know she's casually dating them both).W hile I think the right choice is obvious and it's annoying that Juni doesn't just make the right choice, it's not at the "ARGH" stage most triangles get to.
• Her sisters! I really need to spend more time talking about Juni's sisters.
• The way the bank robbery story was resolved was so good, it made up for any of my complaints about the murder story.
• The ability of the owner of a used car dealership to turn anything into a sales pitch is truly impressive. It would be annoying in real life (even if it's what made him a success), but it's fun in a fictional character.
• I have no idea how to talk about what Juni won at the fair and how it tied into resolving so much, but...that was brilliant.
• The funeral scene...so good.
• The way the bank robbery story was resolved was so good, it made up for any of my complaints about the murder story.

This is one of those sequels that improved on everything that the original did right, expanding the world, and just having more fun with everything. Do you need to read Vinyl Resting Place first? Nope—it’s very easy to pick things up at this point—you’ll likely want to buy it after reading this, but the order isn’t essential at this point.

I do worry that at some point the residents of Cedar River are going to decide that Juni’s the Angel of Death having brought so many murders to town with her, but until then I’m looking forward to several more adventures with her and her family.