The Questionable Behavior of Dahlia Moss is quirky and delightful, even if I had to look the other way while our heroine steals the new game’s code for her unknown client. Murder is only murder, but IP theft is serious stuff. Oh well. Ms. Moss hasn’t stepped up to investigation as a professional, breezing through in her ad-hoc style, but she’s thinking about it, and a certain amount of this book is about deciding to take the plunge. Commitment hasn’t been the 26 year old’s strong suit, as witnessed by the lack of steady employment and some romantic confusion. She’s fond of her nominal boyfriend, Nathan (sexy biologist) but distracted by the inexplicably sort of alluring police detective (Anson). Unlike her previous adventures, this one is more madcap than mystery, despite the body she finds in the storeroom, but all the characters are fun and the seeds laid here should pay off in further stories.Dahlia Moss isn’t technically a private investigator, she’s taken a few courses, found a few corpses (this is her third book) and solved some crimes in geekdom. In the first book she got shot, in the second she got a concussion, which she’s still a little woozy from, and she’s been kidnapped repeatedly along the way. Ms. Moss has a quirky sense of humor, a delightful cast of friends, and a mysterious lawyer-with-money who occasionally drops assignments into her lap. Which is how she gets a temp job at a games app developer as cover for some industrial espionage. Continue reading →
Gunpowder Moon’s title riffs off the unmistakable gunpowder smell that astronauts have reported on lunar landings. It’s journalist David Pedreira’s first novel, about the hazards of lunar mining, at least when someone is trying to sabotage your operation and kill you.
