{"id":4604,"date":"2018-01-14T16:16:44","date_gmt":"2018-01-14T21:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.e357.net\/beingernest\/?p=4604"},"modified":"2018-03-05T16:08:15","modified_gmt":"2018-03-05T21:08:15","slug":"the-questionable-behavior-of-dahlia-moss-a-dahlia-moss-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/the-questionable-behavior-of-dahlia-moss-a-dahlia-moss-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"The Questionable Behavior of Dahlia Moss (A Dahlia Moss Mystery) by Max Wirestone"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>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\u2019s code for her unknown client. Murder is only murder, but IP theft is serious stuff. Oh well. Ms. Moss hasn\u2019t stepped up to investigation as a professional, breezing through in her ad-hoc style, but she\u2019s thinking about it, and a certain amount of this book is about deciding to take the plunge. Commitment hasn\u2019t been the 26 year old\u2019s strong suit, as witnessed by the lack of steady employment and some romantic confusion. She\u2019s 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\u2019t technically a private investigator, she\u2019s 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\u2019s still a little woozy from, and she\u2019s 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.<\/em><\/p>\n

Author Max Wirestone had nailed the geek culture of the small game development company perfectly. Cahaba Apps is has been acquired by a major game house and the pressure is on for them to release their next game, but things aren\u2019t going well. Dahlia is supposed to be immersed in geek culture, so I have no idea what she was thinking when she put a pro-receptionist outfit and shows up early with a bag of pastries to her first day. Well. the pastries are a good thought.<\/p>\n

Inside Cahaba she startles most of the programming staff by waking them up and not being the receptionist they were used to. They\u2019re on perpetual crunch time and it\u2019s not a pretty sight. In fact someone\u2019s Significant Other has posted a letter on Reddit explaining what a terrible place it is. Then there\u2019s the body she finds in the storage room. Of course there\u2019s a body.<\/p>\n

Along the way, we get to see Dahlia work on the love triangle she\u2019s sort of in, which she sensibly points out is more like a love \u201cV\u201d since neither Nathan Willing (sexy biologist) or Anson Shuler(inexplicably sort of alluring police detective) are likely to run off together. And maybe Dahlia can set up that kind of cute guy from corporate who broke up with his goth girlfriend with one of her friends? See? It\u2019s not all murder and no fun.<\/p>\n

The Questionable Behavior of Dahlia Moss<\/strong> is quirky and delightful, even if I had to look the other way when our heroine steals the new game\u2019s code for her unknown client. Murder is only murder, but IP theft is serious stuff. Oh well.<\/p>\n

The mystery aspect of this caper is a bit muddled, and the book reads more like a romp through cyber corp hell than a tale malicious mayhem, though that doesn\u2019t keep it from being fun. At one point Ms. Moss lets the reader know that this is the point in the book where there would normally be a chase scene, and provides a toolkit for writing your own, though the plot fails to require one. Looking over the first two books, which chronicle Ms. Moss\u2019s Unfortunate Decisions<\/strong> and Astonishing Mistakes<\/strong> respectively I expect you\u2019ll find somewhat more traditionally structured mysteries, though I haven\u2019t read them yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s code for her unknown client. Murder is only murder, but IP theft is serious stuff. Oh well. Ms. Moss hasn\u2019t stepped up to investigation as a professional, breezing through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mystery","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4604"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4606,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4604\/revisions\/4606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}