Flight Risk (The Booking Agents, #2)

 

Psychic travel agent, Leda Foley, Niki Nelson, her spitfire best friend, and detective Grady Merritt are back in action after the events of book one, Grave Reservations, and once again I’m loving it!

When Grady’s dog goes missing in Mount Rainier National park and is found a few days later carrying a man’s leg in his mouth, so begins the mystery of “Mr. Leg”, as he (or at least that part of him) is initially referred to. In Leda’s travel agent office, she’s approached by the brother of a missing woman, who’s been gone for a month, but only reported missing by her husband a couple weeks prior, after she disappeared with a bag of her employer’s money. When it later becomes evident that these two cases are connected, Grady and Leda once again combine their collective skills to help solve these cases.

Here’s my argument for reading this series:

It’s fun! It’s absolutely, preposterously unrealistic, but who cares? It’s a cozy mystery in the vein of every silly TV detective series you’ve ever seen, and it’s the absurdity of it that makes it so charming!

Leda is quirky in a way that reminds me, ever so slightly, of a few other favorite female characters of mine like Nina Hill, Eleanor Oliphant or Molly the Maid. She’s often unfiltered and headstrong, but she’s also well-meaning, kind, funny and resourceful, and I always enjoy seeing what her “woo-woo vibes”, as she calls them, tell her. Put Leda with her even more unfiltered friend, Niki, and you know trouble is coming - in the good way!

Leda and Grady balance each others’ personalities perfectly. He’s the level-headed, play (mostly) by the rules type, and she’s the “go where the spirit takes me” type, and the push and pull of their friendship is always entertaining. I LOVE that the author hasn’t pushed even a hint of romance between them. How refreshing!

There are dogs. I’m more of a cat person, myself, but even I couldn’t resist the charms of Grady’s “I’ll eat anything, including dead people parts” dog, Cairo, and another detective’s scent-sniffing dog, T-Rex. Equally cute is Leda’s absolute devotion to her goldfish, Brutus, but that’s another story …

My only downsides are that I wasn’t quite as enamored of this storyline or its resolution as in the first book, and it felt like it took awhile for Leda’s psychic abilities to really come into play, but these characters have created a lot of goodwill in my heart for them, so I fully enjoyed it nonetheless. I still have my fingers crossed that this gets made into a TV series!

If you want good, silly, cozy mystery fun that you don’t need to take too seriously, it’s a great series, and I’ll definitely be in line for book #3!

★★★★

Thanks to Atria Books, NetGalley and author Cherie Priest for this ARC to honestly review. It’s due for publication on November 1st, 2022.