Mostly Murders

Book 1 in the A Hot Dog Detective Mystery Case series.

Mark MacFarland has hit rock bottom and is now working his way up. After his wife was murdered and the suspect’s case was declared a mistrial, MacFarland left the force, drowned his sorrows in alcohol and lived on the streets for years. Now he has stopped drinking and is operating as a hotdog vendor, giving free food to his homeless friends and doing his best to stay out of trouble. But trouble, it seems, has a way of finding him.

When a woman is accused of her husband’s murder, her lawyer is convinced that she didn’t do it. He hires MacFarland to prove the woman’s innocence, and though he at first refuses, MacFarland soon finds himself drawn into the case against his own better judgement. With the help of his former colleague Cynthia Pierson and his homeless friend Rufus, MacFarland begins to unravel the case and soon realises that someone with enough money and influence to disrupt an ongoing police investigation is involved. As the stakes get higher and MacFarland becomes more and more involved, the price for failure goes up until the whole case becomes a potentially lethal affair, not just for MacFarland, but for his friends as well.

Mathiya Adams calls the novel a “semi” cozy mystery, and I think that is a good description. MacFarland is technically an amateur sleuth, but the story places a lot of emphasis on forensics and police procedures. The story isn’t filled with blood and gore, but it also isn’t as cute and cozy as most other cozy mysteries out there. To me, it sits somewhere between cozy mystery and crime thriller/detective novel/police procedural, with elements from both ends of the spectrum.

Cozy mystery – Crime thriller