Perfect Sax: A Madeline Bean Novel [Hardcover]

Madeline Bean has just finished putting on a catered event for a charitable group, and she's ready to go home and collapse. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen. She finds some personal papers of a neighbor in her driveway and finds the person at the event. When she tries to tell him that she has them, he thinks that she is trying to blackmail him. His girlfriend also goes off the deep end on Maddie. A rare and expensive saxaphone which had a $100K bid turns up missing when people go to claim their winnings after the event. On her co-worker's request after the event, she loans her jeep to an employee for an emergency, but the employee turns up in Maddie's bedroom that night shot to death. When the neighbor whose papers she found also turns up murdered, she starts wondering if she's next. A number of people in her life could well be the killer and/or be involved in the theft, and she's not real sure who to trust. To make it worse, she's falling hard for this guy who might be involved, and she's still not sure how she feels about her ex-boyfriend cop who wasn't quite yet divorce from his wife.

Much like Mumbo Gumbo, the plot twists keep you guessing, and you don't get complete resolution until the end. Maddie's an extremely likeable character, and you easily identify with her as she's trying to stay alive and not lose her sanity. While her personal life is still up in the air at the end of the book, there is plenty of room to run with it in the next installment. Good read, and good job by the author.

Chuck Hornett, her ex-boyfriend and cop, tries to ease Madeline's fears by loaning her a gun but only on the condition that she learns how to handle it. Chuck has been catapulted back into her life because of the murder and he wants to win back her affection. But Maddie has a serious problem with the fact that he has returned to his estranged wife to help her through her cancer treatments. Just to complicate her love life even more, she becomes involved with the brother of one of her Woodward ball clients. The young and handsome Dexter Wyatt has her heart fluttering and her pulse racing, but is he just too good to be true? Madeline jumps feet first into tying all of her mysteries together including the mysteries of her heart.

Author Jerrilyn Farmer manages to neatly wrap up the seemingly impossible tangle of insurance fraud, hookers, obsession, and murder. Along the way, she gives us sometimes glamorous, sometimes scathing insights into the lives of the LA rich and powerful. The frenzy of plot twists and motivations are nicely balanced with explorations of Madeline's issues with trust and relationships. The characters are likeable and complex and I enjoyed the way that Farmer ties in Maddie's personal issues with her investigations.