(courtesy Hachette Australia)
Jumping without looking into a reasonably long-running series of books does not always end well.
If the author is skilled and accomplished, they will do a marvellously good job of folding you into an already established world, getting you up to speed with who the main character/s are and what they’ve done to date while moving the franchise forward for those who have been reading from the start.
Thankfully Elle Cosimano is definitely one of those authors, which means that joining Finlay Donovan series, running since 2021 when Finlay Donovan Is Killing It released, is not the jarring move flinging your readerly self into a fast-moving story arc it might otherwise be.
In fact, diving headlong into Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave does such a seamlessly good job of marrying exposition with current narrative that it takes you a while to realise that a lot of storytelling, five books of it as it turns out, have gone before.
And that, dear unobservant readers, of which this reviewer is one, picking up this title without checking there were other books in the series (and yes, they are shown at the bottom of the cover so mea culpa when I rushed to buy the current instalment), is a very good thing.
It speaks to how sparklingly well Cosimano writes, folding in facts here and there about the five novels which preceded this one without once compromising a story which is vivaciously funny, clever and thrillingly involving.
I would call Brendan Haggerty first thing on Sunday and have him fetch his nosy, overbearing, pain in the ass grandmother and find somewhere else for her to stay, or I would load the woman into my minivan and relocate her body myself.
In Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave, we meet the titular character – or meet again if you have been, wholly sensibly, reading these books in order – and her nanny/partner-in-crime Vero who merrily skirt the bounds of legality as they investigate murders and try to right various wrongs (some of which they, rather inadvertently, but not fatally, contribute to) which plague friends and family.
In this case, the victim of the moment, if you can call it that, is Finlay’s neighbour, Mrs. Haggerty, a crotchety woman in her eighties who presides over the Neighbourhood Watch with insufferable zeal and who seems to spend her time disapproving of absolutely everything, most tellingly Finlay herself.
While Mrs. Haggerty is usually the one who holds people to account and demands they atone for the sins she willingly assigns them, she is the one in the firing line as the novel opens, with police having found a body buried in her rose garden.
Yeah, not exactly the sort of thing that places you on the right side of the law, but as the police investigation continues, and Mrs Haggerty is miraculously cleared of any wrongdoing, Finlay has to grapple with the fact that the neighbour she hates and who seems to enthusiastically hate her back needs a place while her own home is an active crime scene.
And whose place is the best one, decides Mrs Haggerty and her grandson. While Finlay’s of course, much to the titular protagonist’s great and hilariously expressed unhappiness.
(courtesy official author site)
What really makes Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave zing, and presumably powers the whole series too, is how fantastically witty and gloriously happy Finlay is to subvert the done thing.
She’s a devoted mum, and ex-wife to a philandering POS called Steven, and brilliantly good at what she does, but she’s also willing to skirt standard expectations and do what needs to be done to get the deed done.
It doesn’t always end well, and there are scenes in Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave which are as hilarious as they are nervewracking, as what seems like a good idea at the time turns out to be nothing of the sort.
It’s Finlay’s garrulous, world-weary-tinged vivacity that brings so much life to the novel and coupled with Vero’s willingness to push envelopes to breaking point too that makes Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave such an untramelled, vivaciously fun delight.
In fact, much of the great pleasure you will gain from reading the novel, and again, surely the series too, is that Finlay is one of those protagonists you want to spend time with, you want to be even.
She may not get everything right but good lord she’s willing to give it a red-hot go and Cosimano’s masterstroke is making her a highly relatable mix of brilliantly competent and accessibly flawed; she may have wit and guile and bravery aplenty, and the ability to pull things off that might challenge more mortal souls, but she is also capable of making mistakes, whether it’s investigating a case that comes a tad too close to home or tryig to build a relationship with her hot, hunky, emotionally accessible cop boyfriend.
‘Fine. I’ll drive you to your meeting, and I’ll wait in the car. We’ll stop for groceries on the way home.’
And as soon as I got her out of the house, the hunt for her diary was on.
She is, in many ways, a gloriously fun and feisty Everyperson and it’s her very ordinariness even as she does extraordinary things that makes her so damn likable and endlessly appealing.
There is pretty much nothing to dislike about There is pretty much nothing to dislike about Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave.
It comes right out the gate with a story that will not be denied, the prologue setting the scene invigoratingly well, and folding into a wider story that brings together the funny and the profoundly important in ways that fit together so snugly each feels as if they belong intrinsically to the other.
Having something important to say but saying in ways what leave reading hugely amused and laughing out loud at the adorable audacity that is Finlay’s stock in trade, is not even remotely easy but Cosimano manages it with consummate ease, serving up some sage observations about women, their place in society and how a virulent scourge in society seems to have no real fix but a cleverly violent one.
Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave is proof positive that you can write a light and bright and very funny story and still possess real substance and emotional meaning and that diving in without looking, something Finlay is assuredly guilty of at times, isn’t such a bad thing after all, in the right hands, of course.