The first of my Christmas presents didn't let me down.  I'm here to tell you that Elouise Norton, LAPD detective, is a breath of fresh air in police procedural/crime fiction.

Lou is smart, funny, sexy, intense as well as being a perfectly flawed individual.  Yes, sometimes her personal experiences and biases colour how she views a case and how she interacts with her co-workers, but she's so very real!  She has none of those endearing quirky flaws that many crime fiction leads have either.

Lou's current case begins with a house fire and three dead bodies and of course, there's far more than meets the eye.  As Lou and her partner, Colin, pursue the case, she also has to deal with her once-estranged but now back home husband, Greg.  And the remnants of the death by murder of her older sister years before (we saw the solving of that case play out in the previous book).

The twisty trail of the case kept me hooked through the book and while I had suspicions that changed as I went along, the culmination of everything was still pretty much of a surprise.  Not so surprising was the plot of Lou's marriage trials and tribulations, however there were a few bits that I wasn't expecting.  I do hope that in the next book we see more of Lou's friends, Lena and Sayeeta.  They're great characters and I love their interactions with Lou.  Girl power!  :)

I only have one complaint and I don't even know that it's valid, me being a white woman and all, but there MUST be some other way to describe POC skin than to liken it to some coffee or chocolate drink. (And in a book/series with a majority of POC characters, there is a lot of skin described!)

So my second foray into Lou Norton's world was a resounding success.  I loved it and have added Book 3 to my wishlist.

This is the first of the Detective Elouise Norton novels, in which we are introduced to the very real character of Elouise and follow her as she tries to solve the murder of a young woman in current day Los Angeles. That it mirrors another disappearance from her past makes the case that much more important.  

Elouise, Lou as her friends call her, is a very real, very interesting, very recognisable character. I grew to like her very, very much.  The author was not afraid of giving her believable flaws to go along with her believable talents.  And she's funny.  I like her wry wit and that amused cynical observation ability she has.  She's a terrific character to base a series on, if you ask me.  :)

I liked the cast of supporting characters as well.  They all seemed very real and were diverse where they needed to be diverse.  In other words, I didn't feel as if the different ethnicities were added because that's what we do now.  (So often the diversity seems inserted just for approval, I find.)  This is how a detective squad looks in LA.  I assume that in later books (the 3rd volume is out next month, I think... and a quick look at the blurbs tell me that it's so) we will be exploring more and more of them.  

The murder mystery had me going until the end and the climax of the story worked quite well, I thought.  I also appreciated the short chapters - it kept a sense of urgency going throughout the novel.  I kept wanting to turn the pages and then ... oh, just another chapter before I turn out the light.  Some authors will say that it doesn't matter and I have to disagee.  :)

So yes... I'm adding Elouise Norton to the mystery series that I will follow.  It was really good!