Past Saturday I've finished reading this book, the first of a four books series centered on the adventures of Charlotte "Charlie" Cooper, an almost-30-years-old lady. This girl was working as a typist secretary (or coffee girl, that was, at a 50%, her main work) on Boston Police Department; the payment she received for her work was so poor that her home was a micro-department (or closet).  But all that would be the least of her worries when her boss tells her that she would team up with a fellow police officer, a dude called Graywell, as a kind of covert detective asking questions in her hometown, Springston. 

That was just the beginning of a lot of laugh, facepalms and reflections focused on the protagonist, a clueless, innocent and a little inept person, and her two new friends, two waitresses with a better detective instinct than herself, in Saturday at the evening. In fact, it was the most absurd and funny beginning ever; absurd, because you wonder who is more incompetent, if Charlie or her boss, the police captain. Funny, because that question already had an answer. And no, the protagonist is not the most incompetent; she at least, wuth all her cluelessness,  has tried to solve the death of her partner (and almost dies in the attempt along with her two friends, Celeste and Marge).

Despite the book was a quick read, sometimes the plot seemed a yo-yo with its ups and downs, for not to mention that sometimes you crave to jump the page in order to know if Charlie and her friends finally caught the drug dealers; other times you wanted to know a little more about some character, and other times you noted more and more inconsistencies at the point of being annoyed. In my opinion, the plot twists (specially at the ending) were a great strategy. An example of it was the fact that Charlie didn't know anyone from her own hometown, except her family; you wonder how was that situation since the character insists again and again that she not so successfully evaded to visit her family. An inconsistence that the author arranged by adding that there was some migratory dynamics and that the girl has short memory (like Dory from Finding Nemo).

About the charcaters, they gave me some mixed feelings; I got to love Charlie's friends, Marge and Celeste, I got to hate/love Charlie and her family, and to give not so much relevance to the rest of the characters by considering them more as filler than characters per se. I hope that in the following books related to Charlie Cooper these characters could be a little more developed and that I could know a little more about them.

The book can be purchased only on Amazon, at least for the moment.