babydollTitle: Babydoll: A Saylor Oz Mystery
Author: Allyson Roy
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Berkley Books

Summary:
Dr. Saylor Oz, sex therapist extraordinaire, has a knack for getting herself mixed up in some questionable situations.  Surrounded by mystery and intrigue she finds herself a willing participant in the investigation of a series of murders.  This isn’t just your everyday investigation though, this particular case involves her best friend and roommate Benita’s brother Angel.

Believing that Angel, a budding photographer, is being falsely accused of the serial murders of three models the ladies find themselves neck deep in a dangerous investigation of the fashion world in the hopes of proving his innocence.  Attempting to enlist the assistance of professional legal and third party investigatory parties when that falls through the ladies take the mission on themselves. Being left to their her devices Saylor quickly wiggles she and Benita into a series of situations of questionable morality and safety.

Pornography, drugs, murder, kidnapping….you name it Saylor and Benita find themselves smack in the middle of it with little skill or knowledge of how to effectively navigate their precarious situation.  Of course neither being the kind to swoon and fall to their knees for a man’s assistance Saylor does attempt to enlist a local private investigator who had previously worked on the case.  As one could guess there is a butting of heads, and other body parts, when he toys with the petite doctor and her outlandish theories as to what really happened in Angel’s case.  To no avail, Saylor isn’t particularly successful in convincing Johnny Lavender of those theories so she goes about working the case on her own.

Enter a series of shady characters and outlandish assistants — most notably Sydney Chen the stereotypical fashion designer who fixates on his new muse Saylor – who over the remainder of the story personify various road blocks  and secret passageways to the girls potential success.

Opinion:
Review of mystery stories are always most difficult as I loathe spoiling the fun of taking the trip with the characters by pointing out certain plot elements.  Readers should not that much of what is stated in this opinion is written with that in mind.

Roy does a wonderful job of making this story quirky and interesting.  Each character has their own distinct niche — Saylor equal parts confident and uncertain; Benita is willful and overpowering while Johnny is tough yet tender.  Unfortunately it seemed other characters seemed a bit more cliched and stereotypical, most notably Sydney Chen’s bitchy and domineering fashion designer.  Having said that, stories of this nature dictate some characterizations be created to throw the reader off  fortunately Roy is adept in doing just that by creating that misdirection in several key places.

As one would expect the overall mystery had some interesting twists and turns though at times I felt there were small non-critical parts that fell a little closer on the predictability scale.  For example, some of the elements of the mishaps Saylor and Benita had to endure on their way to resolution were where the reader encountered this most often.  Further I thought some of the transitions between scenes were a bit abrupt, one moment we have Saylor girl mystery solver then seconds later we had Doctor Love MD.  I personally could have done without some of the sexual innuendo but given the subject matter of the mystery and it’s main character it was not entirely out of place.

Where the story excelled most was in creating a grander scheme of the who ‘dunnit where the reader didn’t have any idea who actually did it until the very bitter end.  There were any number of reasonable possibilities with valid motives yet as a reader I was guessing who it really was. The corruption and nefarious activities at several different levels and positions made it a reasonable expectation that just about anyone could have done it, include the person charged.

It is the latter aspect that makes Babydoll well worth the read. Roy didn’t write characters that take themselves too seriously, the dramatic elements weren’t steeped in some powerful learning opportunity, it wasn’t some grand romantic epic where the story was clouded by love triangles and potential for happy endings it was just good old fashioned fun and entertainment that was also mysterious at the same time.

[This review is part of a blog tour arranged by TLC Book Tours]
(book provided via publisher/tour company)