Woot, Woot! It's Friday. And I have a book to review! Double-awesome-ness!
This week (yesterday, in fact) I read this:
Which could be retitled as: “The Most Hilarious FBI Mystery
Ever.”
Yeah,
yeah, the premise isn’t terribly realistic but that couldn’t matter less. Ms. Davidson
delivers so many witty punch lines, and ties them in seamlessly in her
character development, that it won’t take long for you to believe that a
twenty-something woman with Multiple Personality Disorder* would make a
fantastic FBI agent.
But wait. Jennie, do
you mean that the MC, Cadence, is an FBI agent with Multiple Personality
Disorder?
Yes. Yes, that is
exactly what I mean.
(I’ll give you a
moment to let the concept sink in…….ready? Okay!)
So
the plot is similar to any other FBI mystery. There’s a serial killer on the
loose, called the Threefer Killer because s/he leaves bodies in multiples of
three, and it’s up to Cadence to crack the case.
Or, I guess
technically, it’s up to Cadence, Shiro and Adrienne.
Let
me break it down:
Cadence
is the dominant personality, so she’s pretty much in charge. I guess you could
call her, “The Nice One.”
Shiro
is the tougher personality and comes out when Cadence can’t deal with
something. She’s really good at solving cases and focusing for a long time.
Also, she’s super protective of Cadence, kind of like a stern mother who’d have
you pinned on the ground in a choke-hold before you knew what hit you.
And
then there’s Adrienne, who is a complete effing lunatic. Her chapters don’t
make a whole lot of sense but that’s because she’s a primitive kind of
personality. Essentially, she’s the most dangerous of the three because she
acts on impulse and would beat you within an inch of your life before getting
bored and then robbing a liquor store.
And
did I mention that Cadence’s partner, George, is a diagnosed sociopath with a
penchant for hideously tacky ties? There’s also a senior agent with an
unhealthy obsession with knives, an agoraphobic secretary and a whole other
slew of slightly unstable characters. There’s even a super-hot baker/love
interest for Cadence, who made me want to do naughty things with buttercream
icing. Very naughty things.
I
will admit that the first few chapters are kind of confusing. Mostly because
Cadence sometimes switches personalities mid-sentence, which makes for abrupt
chapter ends and starts, but after the first four-or-so chapters, I settled
right in.
The mystery itself is go-go-go, so between that and the amazingly hilarious
characters, I read the book in less than four hours. Sure, the ending left me
slightly confused but it didn't really bother me. I was just sad that it was over.
So,
this one belongs in the MUST READ pile. If you’re still unsure about it, I'll leave you with the first sentence of Ms. Davidson’s bio, which is on the inner flap. If
I’d read it before, I would have picked up Me,
Myself and Why? a long time ago:
“MaryJanice Davidson invented (a) her
children and (b) the vampire chick-lit genre. Also the Internet. She is kind to
(some) children and (occasionally) small animals, and enjoys referring to
herself in the third person.”
*The
new diagnosis is Dissociative Identity Disorder but that’s not what Ms.
Davidson uses. She explains that it’s because nobody would know what she was
talking about, which is probably true.
