Maggie has taken over her late uncles PI agency in Miami. With a love of old detective shows Maggie feels like she knows what she’s doing. That all changes when her client who hired her to find out if his wife is having an affair suddenly turns up dead. Her cheating-spouse case becomes a murder one and when the police don’t always want to listen to her, Maggie with the help of her elderly, knitting needle–wielding assistant Dorothy are on the case. But when more people seem to be getting hurt and men begin to follow Maggie, will her first case be her last?

I shall start by saying I did not like this book but as it was short at just over 200 pages and completing and reviewing it would fill the PI crime genre for the Eclectic Reader challenge I powered through it.

I found the language and writing incredibly simple and full of awkward and cringe-worthy clichés. As I was reading it some sections reminded me of bad fanfiction (I will be the first to say there’s some amazing novel-length fanfiction out there but also some very paint-by-numbers stuff) in this instance Crime Wave was paint-by-numbers. One example of the not-great writing is: “It was hard to concentrate with Jake sitting beside me, especially when his manly scent kept tickling my nostrils.” Seriously?! Manly scent?! There was so many phrases that just made me roll my eyes. (more…)