Sticky Fingers

Starred review from January 17, 2011
Martin's wacky second Roxy Abruzzo mystery improves on the excellent first entry, 2010's Our Lady of Immaculate Deception (retitled for reprint Foxy Roxy). A few days after Roxy—architectural salvage expert, singer, and recovering sex addict—turns down an offer on behalf of her imprisoned mobster uncle, Carmine Abruzzo, to kidnap snooty museum curator Clarice Crabtree, a former high school classmate of hers, Det. Bug Duffy of the Pittsburgh police takes her to a crime scene at an old industrial site. Bug shows her a body recovered from the Ohio River that Roxy identifies as Clarice. Curious to find out who popped Clarice, Roxy rolls into action accompanied by her lovable sidekick, Nooch Santonucci, a big lug with a heart of gold, and her pooch, Rooney. Roxy's evolving relationships with Sage, her rapidly maturing teenage daughter, and with Sage's chef dad, Patrick Flynn, give this series an extra heart-tugging zing.

Starred review from February 15, 2011
An architectural salvager discovers that the real trash can be found among Pittsburgh's intellectual elite.

When times are tough in the salvage business, Roxy Abruzzo (Our Lady of Immaculate Deception, 2010, etc.) isn't above taking on odd jobs for her mobbed-up uncle Carmine. But there are some jobs that are just too odd for Roxy, and kidnapping her old schoolmate Clarice Crabtree is one of them. Not that Clarice wasn't a pain even in high school, where she rubbed Roxy's nose in her working-class roots. But now that she's a museum curator who specializes in megafauna, Clarice is an insufferable snob who brushes off Roxy's attempts to warn her about the kidnap threat. When a rug containing Clarice's corpse turns up in an abandoned field, Roxy sheds no tears. But her old friend Bug Duffy, now a police detective, thinks Roxy knows more than she's telling. Besides, Roxy has promised herself to be a better role model for her teenaged daughter Sage. So she bundles her cousin Nooch and her mutt Rooney into her truck to check out Clarice's digs, where she finds two grieving widowers: the sire to Richie, Clarice's budding fashion-designer son, and the adopted father of her China-born daughter, Olympic skating hopeful Sugar. Now Clarice has to evade Bug's sharp questions—as well as some softer advances from Sage's father Flynn, her old flame—while figuring out who had it in for a multiply-married lady.

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February 1, 2011

Her demo and salvage business suffering in the economic downturn, Roxy Abruzzo (Foxy Roxy) has done a few other jobs, like collecting overdue gambling losses for her Uncle Carmine, an imprisoned mob boss. When he asks her to kidnap a woman, Roxy refuses but finds herself the number one suspect when the woman is murdered. Martin, author of the wacky "Blackbird Sisters" series, has come up with another eccentric crew running wild, this time in Pittsburgh. Roxy, who is trying to set a good example for her teenage daughter, has given up her promiscuous ways but can't seem to shed her tendency to get into trouble. VERDICT Martin is a good choice for those who have read all of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series and want to try something new. [Library marketing; regional author tour.]

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2011
Roxy Abruzzo, who owns a Pittsburgh architectural salvage business, is turning over a new leaf, hoping to set a better example for her teenage daughter, Sage, who has just endured a pregnancy scare. Since business is slow, Roxy has accepted a few debt-collection jobs from her crime-boss uncle, Carmine, causing a feud with Gino Martinelli, who owes Carmine money and whom Roxy left naked on a busy street after she found him in bed with one of Sages friends. However, when Carmine wants to hire Roxy to kidnap Clarice Crabtree, her high-school nemesis, Roxy immediately turns down the job. Clarice disappears (shortly after Roxy tried to warn her) and is soon found dead, prompting Roxy to investigate, both to prove her own innocence and to help Clarices children. Dodging Ginos attempts at revenge, monitoring her daughters love life, and coming to terms with her own mothers years-ago murder also help keep Roxy busy. A definite read-alike for fans of Janet Evanovich.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)