Mother's Day Out by Karen MacInerney, a Mysterious Review.

Review: The Peterson family needs a little extra money to help pay the bills for their growing family, so Margie decides to take a part-time job, hoping for something that will allow her some scheduling flexibility. But when she's hired by a private investigation agency to do some field work, she isn't quite prepared for all the "benefits" that come with the job, in Mother's Day Out, the first mystery in this series by Karen MacInerney.

Her first assignment ends with her taking a photo of a cheating husband in a compromising situation — all well and good — except she loses her daughter's favorite toy in the process. Still, she's encouraged enough to take on a slightly more daring assignment: enticing a man to come on to her while her photographer/partner captures the moment. She follows her target to a bar, not realizing it's a gay bar and it's the Rainbow Room's Tuesday Night Drag Queen Showdown. The good news: she wins third place! The bad news: the man she was following is murdered while she's on stage. The no-reasonable-explanation-for news: She finds the body, and while using his phone to call 9-1-1 notices that the last number called is a familiar one: her own home phone.

Mother's Day Out is a fast-reading, breezy, and at times really quite funny mystery that is far more about character than plot. The former is a delightful, modern woman juggling family and career … such as it is. Her cast of supporting characters is also well drawn. And while the latter — the murder mystery plot — is nicely set up, its execution is a little thin, tending to rely on an overly complicated sequence of twists and turns as it plays out. On balance, though, this is a solid introduction to this series, an entertaining book likely to be enjoyed primarily for the situations in which Margie finds herself than for the "whodunit" element of the mystery itself.

Death Runs Adrift
Midnight Ink (Trade Paperback), May 2014
ISBN-13: 9780738734606; ISBN-10: 0738734608

Mother's Day Out

A Margie Peterson Mystery by Karen MacInerney