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Winter is a great time for curling up with a cozy mystery. After a day of winter activities (or even just battling the traffic on snow-covered roads), it’s nice to come home to a light, undemanding read like author Laura DiSiverio’s Swift Run.
A year after her embezzling husband, Les, ran off to Costa Rica with his gold-digging personal trainer, Georgia “Gigi” Goldman is just scraping by. Les left her a house that she can’t afford, two troublemaking teenagers, and half-ownership of a private investigative firm, for which she now works.
Gigi is just starting to get the hang of her new job as a PI when an unexpected new client walks through the door: Heather-Anne, her ex-husband’s girlfriend. It seems that Les secretly returned to Colorado and promptly went missing—and Heather-Anne wants to pay Gigi to find him back.
Gigi knows that the firm needs the money, so she takes the case. But when Les slips through her fingers and Heather-Anne turns up dead, a simple missing persons case gets seriously messy.
Set against a backdrop of ski slopes and the blizzard-bound Colorado countryside, Swift Run is a fun-filled wintery-weather whodunit. Though it isn’t quite as madcap as I originally expected, it’s written with a healthy dose of humor. So while it may not have readers doubled over in laughter at the quirky characters and their outrageous antics, it’s still an enjoyable read with some likable characters.
Gigi Goldman makes a lovably bumbling lead. Once rich and pampered, Gigi has been forced to curb her shopping habit and learn to fend for herself and her two spoiled teens. It’s an entertaining fish-out-of-water situation: a woman who once worried about little more than matching her designer shoes to her pricey new handbag is suddenly forced to use her head to track down crooks and ex-husbands. And, fortunately, Gigi handles it surprisingly well. She may not be the most cunning sleuth, but she isn’t irritatingly flighty, either.
Gigi’s partner, Charlie Swift, on the other hand, is the brains of the operation. Though she spends most of the book recovering from a bullet wound in her butt, she does get to venture out from time to time—and her ongoing relationship with her priest friend gives her story some unexpected romantic tension.
As for the mystery, well, it’s not exactly difficult to solve. You’ll most likely figure out the killer’s identity early on—but that doesn’t mean that you’ll quickly lose interest. Instead, the story behind the murder unfolds gradually, so while the killer’s identity may not keep you guessing, the motive might.
It may not be a gripping thriller—or a side-splitting comedy—but Swift Run is a fun-filled winter adventure. The snowy settings and lightly comic characters make it good choice for reading in front of the fireplace after a day on the slopes.
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