Finlay Donovan Is Killing It (2021) by Elle Cosimano is the first installment in a widely-popular comic thriller/mystery series (the third book is expected in January 2023) in which we meet divorced mother of two, writer Finlay Donovan.
After a rushed meeting with her editor, Finlay is mistaken for a hit woman, and decides to investigate her would-be target, to see how much of a “not nice” man he is. She finds out he probably deserves jail time, at a minimum. Unfortunately, he ends up dead even though Finn had not intended to kill him. What can she do? How can she save her family, keep custody of her kids, and figure out who actually did kill him? It’s a comedy of errors with very serious potential consequences, both from the criminal justice system, and the Russian mob, which has somehow become involved.
I thought it was very well done, and will probably read the sequels. I appreciated that there was no anti-fatness that I could discern. Cosimano did not describe characters’ body shape or size in either a negative nor a positive way, and relied on other details, such as hair and clothing, to provide information about their state of mind or personality. While I would love to read a fat-positive mystery, I’ll take a weight-neutral one over anything with anti-fatness.
Finlay is the kind of mess–a working mother just barely holding it together–that I can appreciate. She could be one of my best friends, a few years ago when our kids were small. I also loved the friendship aspect between Finn and Vero, her nanny, and the fact that Finn’s cop sister is queer. Definitely recommend.
Reading While Fat 