Book: The Book of Lost and Found

Author: Lucy Foley

Genre: Fiction/Family/Grief/Romance

Summary: Kate Darling's enigmatic mother - a once famous ballerina - has passed away, leaving Kate bereft. When her grandmother falls ill and bequeaths to Kate a small portrait of a woman who bears a striking resemblance to Kate's mother, Kate encounters a mystery that may upend everything she thought she knew. Kate's journey to find the true identity of the woman in the portrait takes her to some of the world's most iconic and indulgent locales, revealing a love story that began in the wild 1920s and was disrupted by war, and that could now spark new love for Kate. Alternating between Kate's present-day hunt and voices from the past, The Book of Lost and Found, casts light on family secrets and love - both lost and found. - Back Bay Books, 2015.

"Lost and Found" wasn't what I'd expected from the publisher's summary. I thought I'd be reading a dog-centric cosy mystery with a kick-ass heroine and her save-the-day dog.

What I got was less clichéd than that but also less easy to settle into.

This is too hard-edged and has too much violence in it for a cosy mystery. I'd barely started the book and had seen one person shot in the face at close range and another stabbed to death. The body count keeps rising, making the bad guys into spree killers rather than devious villains.

There are also some very dubious portrayals of the behaviour of autistic children. Although the plot shows this behaviour to be abnormal it still felt to me like it was playing to all the wrong fears and stigma attached to autistic kids. 

Shadow, the dog, does indeed save the day and all the parts of the book that relate to him, especially when we get his canine view of the world, work very well. Amy Shojai knows her dogs and knows how to bring them alive for the rest of us.

The cop-with-a-past-and-currently-in-disgrace was well written and believable. The heroine was more difficult to get alongside. Her dialogue, such as it was, seemed awkward and inconsistent. She flips from being highly organised and brave to falling apart and ridden by guilt and doubt. This was explicable in terms of the plot and her backstory but it didn't feel authentic while it was happening.

I enjoyed the book well enough to read my way through it but not enough to read the next two books in the series.

I’d expected a feel-good book with a woman and a dog solving cosy crimes. Now I’ve got someone shot in the face and someone else stabbed to death and creepy things happening to children.

I'm not sure I’ll stick with this.

This was fun! Certainly not the most in-depth book I've ever read, but an enjoyable romp with entertaining characters and brilliantly narrated by Diana Croft.

Daisy Dunlop is a nutty private investigator, along the lines of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum. She has teamed up with her husband's best mate, Solomon, to work on a case that involves a missing poodle. Suffice to say she is petrified by dogs.

The interaction between Daisy and Solomon forms a large part of the book, they are not involved with one another; Daisy is madly in love with her husband Paul, but they seem to manage to get into rather a lot of compromising situations.

Other characters are less detailed and some of those involved with the crime became rather a cast of thousands for me. The crime itself trundles along at a steady pace but then we suddenly get an overload of information which was rather confusing on audio as it's so difficult to rewind when driving etc. This aside, I enjoyed the narrative and the excellent narration and would certainly consider listening to the first book. Hopefully the third book will also be available on audio at a later date.