Money, men and murder rule 35-year-old Madeline Carter's life
in movieland and to truly appreciate her entanglements here's
what you need to know. Madeline is the brainchild of British
Columbia Gulf Islands resident and editor of JanuaryMagazine.com,
Linda L. Richards. Richards has already led Madeline through
some exciting amateur sleuthing in Mad Money, a debut effort
nominated in 2005 for the prestigious Crime Writers of Canada
Arthur Ellis First Novel. Now in The Next Ex Madeline is again
making money, sometimes lots of it, sometimes not, as a home-based
day trading stock broker in Malibu. She's doing well enough
that her landlord, movie director, Tyler Beckett, has asked
her to tutor movie producer Maxie Livingstone's wife Keesia
in the fine arts and crafts of day trading in return for the
all-powerful but obnoxious Maxie funding a major movie for
Tyler.
The 28-year-old, stunningly beautiful Keesia and the tall
blonde Madeline quickly become friends but after Mad accepts
a mysteriously runic inscribed stone as a gift from Keesia
and learns about Maxie's string of four ex wives, their friendship
abruptly ends. Keesia is fatally stabbed and dies in Mad's
arms at a house party at the Livingstones' home, known as
Larkin House in memory of its first resident, Lolita Larkin,
a one time Hollywood star. Keesia is hardly in her grave before
Maxie wants to get into her tightly encrypted computer leading
Mad, who finds Maxie "about as attractive as a jelly
doughnut," to get a real hate on for him. And her loathing
and suspicions worsen when Maxie's former wives start getting
knocked off, one shoved off a bridge, another shot and the
body left in a horse stall, and a third narrowly escapes an
attempted drowning. Mad, of course, gets involved in the scene
from the get-go because she was the first to find Keesia's
body and knows something about the encrypted computer even
though she is not telling all she knows about it to either
the police or to Maxie and his henchmen. And she finds out
plenty by cracking the computer security program and tracking
down other clues and assorted suspects along the way. In fact,
there is enough evidence from the computer, from Keesia's
gift of the stone, and from Madeline's nosing into the past
lives of Maxie's ex wives and even of Lolita Larkin for several
spine tingling attempts to be made to silence her before she
finally gets the police to believe her and arrest the right
person for the right crime.
Although the lead detective on the case sees Madeline as "Miss
Marple" she is more like Jordan Kavanagh of Crossing
Jordan in stubbornly dashing about, following up on clues
and rooting out suspicious characters. She's got a feminine
side though too in going on extended shopping sprees with
a best pal, Emily, and in displaying her emotions for a boyfriend
Gus, or her anger at a deadbeat date who leaves her sitting
at a restaurant even though he's paid the bill. Tyler's dog,
Tycho, views her as his best friend and she loves him too.
And throughout the novel she exhibits her skills as a very
knowledgeable day trader of stocks and bonds, leaving behind
a trail of buys, sells, feeds, portfolios and references to
the NYSE, SEC, and EDGAR as she listens to "the poetry
of numbers, the music of a market."
Knowing Madeline's bad luck with men but her good luck in
making money, solving murders in movie land and entertaining
us so well while she does so, lets hope we'll be lucky enough
to read about her again soon.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
M. Wayne Cunningham writes his reviews in Kamloops BC. Formerly an
English instructor and a senior manager in post-secondary education
in three provinces he also served as the Executive Director of the
Saskatchewan Arts Board. A member of the Crime Writers of Canada and
the Canadian Authors Association, his reviews have appeared in various
publications including a weekly column he wrote for two years for
the Kamloops Daily News. He can be reached at mw_cunningham@telus.net.
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