Book Review: Hot Stuff by Don Bruns (Stuff Series #6)

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Growth for the leads, especially Emily; good mystery

Cons: A couple characters under developed; pacing at the beginning

The Bottom Line:

Sous chef stabbed to death

What is Emily hiding?

Penultimate book

James and Skip are in Another Hot Situation

I’m closing in on the end of Don Bruns’s Stuff series. While I haven’t enjoyed every entry, I did find myself enjoying Hot Stuff, the penultimate book.  

The series follows James Lessor and Skip Moore, best friends and roommates who are struggling just to make ends meet in Miami. James especially has dreams of riches, and he’s come up with a few elaborate schemes that have not worked and have put the two in the path of killers. Along the way, the two have become licensed private investigators. 

When Skip is out with his girlfriend, Emily, at a fancy restaurant, the sous chef is stabbed. Emily and the victim, Amanda, had been friends, and she had set Amanda up with James on a couple of dates. The owner of the restaurant doesn’t trust the police to solve the case, so he hires Skip and James to go under cover in the kitchen to figure out if someone on the staff killed Amanda. But Emily is hiding something about Amanda. Can Skip and James solve the case without driving a wedge between Skip and Emily?

The characters in this series can be a bit immature at times. I’m happy to say that they’ve been slowly maturing as the series progresses, and that holds true again here. I especially appreciated the spotlight that Emily got in this book. She had quite a bit to deal with, and we got to see her mature through it. The majority of the characters are new. There were a couple that I had a hard time keeping straight, but for the most part they were well developed. 

The mystery is entertaining. It felt a bit slow to start to me, but I was fully engrossed before too long. The climax was logical and wrapped things up to my satisfaction. 

While these books aren’t cozies, the language and violence is kept to a minimum. Anything else is implied. 

I’m very curious to see how this series will wrap up. Hopefully, I enjoy the last book as much as I did Hot Stuff. 

Get more stuff with the rest of the Stuff Series.