Review

For fans of:  Juliet Blackwell

Abby Cooper and Candice Fusco are not only business partners, they're also best friends, so when Candice leaves Abby a late-night voicemail asking her to drive to their office, retrieve a file, and hide the contents, Abby complies without a second thought. Sure, it's a little weird that Candice wants Abby to perform the errand under the cover of darkness, and it's even weirder that she wants Abby to keep the errand a secret, but Abby can always ask Candice for answers later.

When Abby arrives home, though, she finds Candice's husband Brice in her kitchen and the police at the door. The authorities claim Candice killed a man and is now on the run. Nobody who knows Candice believes her capable of such a crime, but the evidence appears irrefutable. Can Abby, Brice, and Abby's husband Dutch work together to find and somehow exonerate Candice, or will their digging merely prove that Candice Fusco isn't the person they thought her to be?

Fatal Fortune is the twelfth of Victoria Laurie's Psychic Eye Mysteries, and it's one of the best books I've read this year. Laurie's one of my favorite authors, so I went into this book with very high expectations – expectations that Fatal Fortune not only met, but exceeded. Laurie completely and totally nails every aspect of this book. The setup is simple, yet clever. The mystery's intelligently conceived and elegantly executed, with twists and turns in all the right places. The stakes are high. The plot is fun. The pace is breakneck.  And as always, Laurie's character work is among the best in the business.

Abby's a wonderfully winsome protagonist and an instantly engaging narrator. She's goofy and silly and spastic and sweet, but she's also smart, stubborn, and loyal to a fault, and these qualities combine to form a heroine for whom you can't help but root. While Candice is absent for most of the book, evidence of her deep and abiding friendship with Abby is present on almost every single page, and their relationship plays such a significant role in the story that it's almost a character in its own right. Abby's husband, FBI agent Dutch Rivers, is far from just a token series love interest and law enforcement official; he's Abby's partner – in life, in love, and in crime (and crime-fighting). Every shared experience has an impact on their relationship, and as a result, their relationship evolves and matures from book to book. Also, the longer Dutch and Abby are together, the more realistic and nuanced their interactions become. It's little touches like this that give Laurie's characters such life and that cause every thought, action, motivation, and piece of dialogue she writes to ring 100% true.

Just when I think Victoria Laurie can't get any better, she goes and proves me wrong. Go buy Fatal Fortune, and then get in line behind me and all the other rabid fans who can't wait to see what she comes up with next.

Reviewed by Kat