Not According To Flan is the first book in the Cozy Mystery genre I’ve read, and I have to say I was pretty underwhelmed. The heroine, Jane, is supposedly an intelligent paralegal who appears at the same time to be a complete airhead. Case in point; on realising that someone has definitely been inside her house, since some of her things have been rearranged, she takes a phone call from a friend and immediately changes focus to thinking about her dinner party without thinking any more about the intruder. Seriously, who does that? Discovering that an intruder had been in my house would be all I could think about!
There were other unbelievable plot points like a professional chef who never has to work on Friday or Saturday nights (pull the other one), an enormous and confusing cast of characters, and frankly a lot of waffling about by Jane who is shallow enough to be offended when construction workers DON’T wolf-whistle at her after cat-calling a much younger woman. I couldn’t warm to her, and I found the story dull and predictable. If cozy mysteries are your thing, you might enjoy it, but I really didn’t. I can’t give it any more than three stars.
Disclaimer: I received this book for review through ReadingAlley.