Book Review: Aerobics Can Be Deadly by Ryan Rivers (Bucket List Mysteries #1)

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Laughs, strong characters, good mystery

Cons: None for me

The Bottom Line:

Video star dies

Sends duo on killer quest

Great characters, laughs

Killer Workouts Are Fun for Us

Last year, I discovered the Bucket List Mystery by Ryan Rivers.  When I met the characters in a short story, I knew I had to go back soon to visit them again, so I settled in for the first full length book in the series, Aerobics Can Be Deadly.

The series features a detecting duo.  Sho Tanaka has recently moved to the town of Bluebonnet Hills, Texas, and moved in with his sister, who is running a café there.  Sho is a nurse, but he lost his job thanks to a prescription drug addiction, and he’s still facing issues, as the panic attacks he’s been having demonstrate.  Meanwhile, Levi Blue is the new mayor of the town, but he’s best known as a child actor and the star of the popular mystery show Tween of the Crime.

This may be the first book of the series, but it isn’t our introduction to the characters.  That actually happens in the novella Arbor Day Can Be Deadly, which I still need to go back to read.  While there are some references to that story here, I was able to follow the characters and relationships here without any problem.

As this book opens, Sho and Levi have picked the first task on their bucket list quest – a triathlon.  But to successfully complete it, they need to train, which leads them to the local gym.  While Sho tries to get them a reduced membership fee, Levi is more excited about the aerobics video that will be filmed there the next day.

Levi gets them both jobs as background extras, so they are on hand when one of the stars of the video collapses and dies as they are filming the first scene.  Levi is ready to jump in and investigate, but Sho is much more reluctant.  Will they figure out what happened at the shoot?

As with the short story I read, this is a comedic mystery.  I was laughing multiple times as I read.  Sho and Levi are very different men.  Sho is our first-person narrator, so his reactions to some of Levi’s antics is priceless.  Meanwhile, Levi treating things like an episode of his TV show is great as well.

Yet, I wasn’t too far into the book when I started to worry that the level of jokes and banter we’d seen so far was going to wear thin before the end of the book.  Fortunately, about that time, the humor started to diminish.  Now, please don’t misunderstand me.  The jokes continued until the very end.  However, they weren’t quite as rapid fire, and we got a little more time to see character and plot develop.

And that’s a good thing because there are some surprisingly serious discussions and moments.  The characters, especially Sho and Levi, get developed beyond our initial impressions of them to be more well-rounded.  As I said, I was still laughing the entire way through, but I was able to appreciate how the characters were developed beyond the jokes.  This does apply to some of the supporting characters as well, although others weren’t given enough page time to be fully developed.  I will say I found the suspect’s relationships a little hard to keep straight at first, but that got better as the book went along.

Meanwhile, we have a solid mystery.  There are plenty of twists and turns.  I didn’t see the ending coming either until Levi and Sho figured it out.

I already have a copy of the novella that introduced the characters, and I will definitely be reading it soon to see how the characters met.  If you are looking for a funny mystery with heart, you definitely need to pick up Aerobics Can Be Deadly.

Be sure to cross the rest of the Bucket List Mysteries off your list.

NOTE: I received a copy of this book.