Allison Brennan is a new author for me. Notorious is apparently the first novel featuring Max Revere.
Max Revere is an investigative journalist, with a trust fund and her own television show. At the behest of the sister of an old friend, she returns to her high school town for a funeral and to investigate an alleged suicide.
The suicide question is solved and resolved very rapidly, thanks in part to a suicide note the police failed to find. However, it re-opens the question of a murder that took place many years before.
Overall, the novel reminded me quite a bit of Linda Fairstein, and the Alexandra Cooper novels. However, one of the things I really like about the Linda Fairstein novels is that they each showcase an interesting and historical aspect of New York, frequently one that I wasn't aware of before. As such, I can put up with the protagonist being impossibly gorgeous, rich, brilliant and talented because I'm not reading it for the realism of the characters, but for the interest generated in relation to the city and the history.
Hmmmm. That sounded a bit catty. Well. I like to read mystery novels for the characters and character interactions. Purely plot driven mystery holds less interest for me. When characters are so blatantly matters of cardboard wish fulfillment, I get less out of them (says the reader who loves James Bond, Perry Mason and other hardboiled detective novels).
Notorious has as its setting a wealthy town or suburb, which seems fictional in all its respects, and doesn't act as its own character in the novel.
In any event, the plot was okay, and I tend to enjoy mysteries that seek to solve long buried murders. I guessed the villain relatively early on, but overall it was competently written. I'd probably give Allison Brennan another chance, since sometimes first a new character takes some time to establish, but I'm not sure I'd seek out the series in order, and may be more inclined to try a stand-alone novel.
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