3.25 stars

I didn’t know that this was the second in a series about Detective Marley Kaplan. About 100 pages in I felt like the appropriate background was given within the novel, and I checked to learn there is indeed a first novel that I hadn’t read. Enough is provided to know the broad strokes of the first book that would jog your memory - if you had read it at all. 

In this novel, the Detective is off the job after the fire (from the last book). Her mother, a professor, has her colleague pulled into a murder investigation as a suspect. Even worse, there’s a Title IX investigation because the death of her student. At her mother’s urging, Marley infiltrated herself into this death investigation by moving into the victim’s room because, after all, the room is available. 😝

Why would an unemployed detective take this case on for free instead of looking for a job? The suspect list was pretty short in this novel. And a lot seemed told rather than shown. 

That said, I didn’t find myself bored. I did want to keep reading and, because the cast list was short, I wasn’t ever confused or overwhelmed.