One for the Money

★ ★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader, I also posted a Q&A with the author.
—
WHAT'S ONE FOR THE MONEY ABOUT?
Cat Caliban's a recent widow, who is ready for a change (since she is still waiting on the Change), and takes the bull by the horn and gets herself her change. She buys an apartment complex, moves herself and her cats into one of the apartments there, and pursues a new career—becoming a Private Investigator. Between the suspicious nature and investigative abilities raising three kids has gifted her with and the extensive research she's done into the P.I. lifestyle (read: reading plenty of P.I. Novels, from Nancy Drew to V. I. Warshawski).

Most of her kids, and most people from her old life, don't approve of this new stage of her life—and she could not care less. Instead, she assembles a new group of friends who are on board with this change—with one carryover from her old life. And the tenants of her apartments end up being a strong base for those friends.

Of course, there's a snag there—when showing a vacant apartment to a couple of potential renters, they discover a murdered woman. Almost immediately, Cat begins annoying the investigating officers by trying to look into the death herself. When it's discovered that the victim is a homeless woman, the priority that the police put on solving the murder drops, but Cat's drive to find justice for the woman increases.

Sure, she's still learning the basics of investigating, but she catches a couple of lucky breaks and makes good progress. She also connects with people—friends of the victim, people she worked with, an activist group she was involved with, and someone who probably saw the victim and the killer minutes before the murder—in a way that the police don't. People respond to this older woman who cares about the woman—not just her death, but the life she led.

One thing leads to another, and Cat's hot on the trail of both the killer and what could have prompted the killing in the first place.

I'M A SUCKER FOR THIS KIND OF THING
I am a sucker for fictional PI/PI-types who largely (or entirely) learn their way through detecting via PI novels like Lee Goldberg's Harvey Mapes (in The Man With The Iron-On Badge, now called Watch Me Die) or Jim Cliff's Jake Abraham (in The Shoulders of Giants)—Bobby Saxon, from The Blues Don't Care, took a similar approach with Bogart movies.

Maybe it's because this is the kind of detective I would be if I had the gumption to try. At the very least I can easily identify with these people, they've read the same things I've read. We think along the same lines. Watching them draw upon their fictional examples to try to decide how to deal with their cases is just fun.

Naturally, Cat (and Borton), get extra credit from me for the number of times they invoke Spenser. But it works no matter what character she's referencing.

THE SUPPORTING CAST
Cat's the focus—and she should be—but she wouldn't be anywhere without the other characters that she bumps up against (we'll ignore the principles/suspects in the investigation). The book might still be good with just Cat and the suspects, but what frequently makes a book worth reading are the secondary and tertiary characters—and Borton fills the novel with people worth reading about.

The people that fall into her life in this novel almost seem too convenient—wow, Cat makes a friend who happens to be able to help her learn to shoot. One of the first people she rents an apartment to happens to be a lawyer who can help her get through the city's legal system, what a crazy coincidence! But once you shrug that off (what novel isn't filled with that kind of thing)

There's an elderly screenwriter character who is a delight. She adds a crucial detail or two that Cat needs to put everything together, but more than anything else, she's just fun to read. Borton brings in a few characters like that—they're around for one or two conversations, but it feels like Borton spent as much time and energy into developing the character for those conversations as she did for the killer or one of the other prime suspects.

I want to talk about the witness to the crime—and his family—but I just don't think I can do them justice without ruining something. But Borton's choices in including him, and the way she did so, are a real strength of the novel.

Even the cats are well-written and likable (long-time readers of this site will recognize how odd that is for me to say)

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT ONE FOR THE MONEY?
Last year, I wrote about Luna Miller's The Lion's Tail (apparently now called Looking for Alice), about a sexagenarian rookie P.I. Sure, Gunvor Strom is a little older than Cat, and the novel's darker—but it's along the same lines.* I really appreciated the way that neither of these women are allowing themselves to be held back by their age, their sex, their past—their utter lack of experience—they can make a difference, they have something to contribute, and they have the drive.

* I mostly bring it up in case readers are asking themselves, didn't he talk about this before? Also, because readers of one of these are really going to want to read the other.

Cat and the team she assembles do the one thing the police are unwilling/unable to do: they can focus on the victim and her life to the exclusion of all else. She can get people to talk to her who wouldn't talk to the police out of principle or intimidation. They open up to her, they tell her things they wouldn't tell others.

She's also smart enough and driven enough to keep going until the facts she uncovers fit together in a way that makes sense.

And Borton delivers all this in an engaging, easy style that makes you want to keep turning the pages. It's a fun story, with a great group of characters that you can't help but root for, and you not only want to find out what happens but you want to know what happens next. I'll be back for the rest as soon as I can, but in the meantime, I'm glad I got to read this one and think you will be, too.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this novel from the author in exchange for my honest opinion and this post.