Fatal February
Barbara Levenson
Reviewed by Tina Avon
Fatal February is a fantastic mystery,
written by Barbara Levenson. The first thing that I noticed and
thoroughly loved was the main character - she is sharp, outspoken,
bright and extremely fun to read. From the opening line, we get
to
meet Mary Magruder Katz and get a quick peek at how spunky and
opinionated she is, as she tackles the injustices that she sees at her
local car wash. Actually, there appears to be quite a lot of
action at
this particular car wash!
Mary is a lawyer and is a firm believer in honesty and truth! and
has difficulty in letting any type of injustice just go by. After
her
"encounter" at the car wash, Mary is accidentally hit from behind,
while driving - it turns out that she has been hit by wealthy developer
Carlos Martin - the chemistry is intantaneous and they end up making
love in her office. Bad move, as Mary's fiance catches them and
immediately breaks off their engagement and fires her from his firm.
In the midst of all of this, Mary is preparing a defense for
Lillian Yarmouth who is accused of stabbing her two-timing hubby and
she is also helping Carlos set up a huge deal. I have to wonder
how
Mary finds time to actually do any type of investigative work with all
the 'situations' she seems to put herself in.
This book worked
for me. There is some great dialogue between Mary and most of the
other characters, especially Carlos and I like the fact that Mary is
not perfect (as so clearly demonstrated by her singularly poor choice
of locations to be having sex).
The mystery part almost feels like a back character to the
storyline, but that actually works well as this is obviously a
character driven book.
I recommend it. I really enjoyed it.