Even Fledging Detectives Need More Focus
When I heard about The Pie & Mash Detective Agency a few months back, I thought the premise sounded like fun. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out to be as good as I hoped it would be.
The book introduces us to Jane Pye and Simon Mash, a millennial couple. Jane has recently lost her job, and she’s signed them up for a beginning private eye class, something Simon is less than interested in. Nearing the end of the term, the instructor passes out cases for the students to work on. However, Jane and Simon’s case is a little different. It’s one their instructor hasn’t already solved.
On the surface it seems simple enough – a man returned home from work one day to discover his front door open and his girlfriend gone. He was certain she was the love of his life, and he’s equally as certain that something bad has happened to her. But the police aren’t taken him serious because of the girlfriend’s name. You see, there have been multiple women with the name Nellie Thorne who have disappeared in this area of England over the decades, so she’s become something of an urbane legend.
But Jane and Simon, well mostly Jane, are determined to show they are taking the class seriously, so they dive into the case. Is Nellie real? If so, is she in trouble?
You can see the appeal. Jane and Simon sounded like a fun detecting duo, and the mystery intrigued me. I just had to know what was going on.
And I did enjoy Jane and Simon. They shared time as our third person point-of-view characters, which allowed us to really get to know them better. While at times they did seem to lean a little too hard into millennial stereotypes, they grow over the course of the book, which I appreciated. They brought some humor to the proceedings as well.
It was mostly the mystery that let us down. Now, let me be clear. I expected that Jane and Simon would take some detours and hit some road blocks along the way – more so than in a typical mystery novel. It’s part of the premise. The problem was they spent quite a bit of time on some of these detours and even a side quest. The uneven pacing was frustrating at times.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the characters we met along the way were interesting. And the book did build to a logical, suspenseful, and fun climax. It just had some fat it needed to trim along the way.
I’m not sorry I picked up The Pie & Mash Detective Agency. But I probably won’t be moving on to their next case when it comes out next year.
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