Veronica Mars is Back - But No Better than the Last Time
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Author: Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham
Title: Mr. Kiss and Tell Genre: new adult fiction mysteryish Neptune’s local “aluminum miner” found the body out in the boonies looking for scrap metal to recycle. Given the degree of brutality, he assumed the young woman was dead. She wasn’t – she’d been raped and beaten, but she was alive; barely. Months later, the victim is suing the Neptune Grand Hotel, where she says she’s finally remembered the face of her attacker, a now-vanished undocumented Mexican man who worked in the laundry. Veronica Mars, girl detective turned unlicensed law-school graduate and partner of Daddy, has been hired by the Grand’s insurer to determine whether she’s telling the truth. Of course, she’s not: without that little lie, Mr. Kiss and Tell would end after sixty pages. The rest of the 277 pages is given over to Veronica’s bulldog-like refusal to let go, a vast array of coincidences about the Marses having a history with everyone in the little seaside town (some sort of west-coast Peyton Place), dithering about Veronica’s love life, a new puppy, and an election that might finally get rid of the detested Sheriff Lamb. Mr. Kiss and Tell is the second novel in the Veronica Mars series, which was resurrected a couple of years back when Kristen Bell reprised her teenaged detective role at her 10th high school reunion. The first, The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line, showed only meager promise. It was clumsily plotted and as predictable as a Super Bowl appearance by the Denver Broncos. In Mr.Kiss and Tell, authors Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham have, unfortunately, failed to improve. The villain is identified early on and much of the action, such as it is, is taken up with proving he did the deed. The big surprise on which the case turns is, unfortunately, completely predictable from the first time Veronica sees the victim on video – who is dumb enough to miss that clue? Too much of the rest of the book is mere filler, lots of reappearances of Veronica’s motley crew of high-school friends and enemies, with all their multitudinous soap-operaish secrets and problems. Blech. Before I leave, I should probably tell Thomas and Graham that, in California, a sheriff is a county officer, not the head of a city’s or town’s police department. all content copyright © 2001-present by scmrak
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