Mystery Book Reviews

Book Review: Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

By Sandy Amazeen Dec 18, 2010, 22:29 GMT

It\'s official: stumbling, bumbling James Lessor and Skip Moore are licensed private investigators. Now, that\'s some scary stuff.It could take time to get Moore or Less investigations off the ground, so James takes a job with a traveling carnival show.But this show has a dubious reputation, having had a string of accidents and at least one death in the past year.When they\'re hired to investigate what\'s caused the carnival chaos, ...more

Still reeling from their last adventure that resulted in their pickup truck being blown up, bumbling amateur detectives Skip Moore and his roommate James Lessor finally receive their private investigator licenses from the Florida State Agricultural Department no less. Now they can officially hang out their shingle as More or Less Investigations though James new job assignment is not quite what they expected. On the surface, carnival owner Moe Bradley has hired James as a marketing director but his real job is to discover who has been sabotaging the rides. The carnival has been plagued with “accidents”, one of which resulted in a death. Against his better judgment, Skip agrees to work a weekend at the carnival with James and quickly remembers why he didn’t want to work as a carnie when the rides start turning scary. Events take a deadly turn with the shooting death of one of the carnies in his own trailer and if Skip and James aren’t careful, they will be next.

After getting off to a slow start, this fun mystery liberally salted with engaging dialog and carnival atmosphere speeds off to a satisfying conclusion. It is grand fun watching these unlikely sleuths work out what’s really going on and when you throw in a bunch of cool spy toys, a shaggy dog and a petting zoo, anything can and does happen.