The Bookwoman's Last Fling is the latest book in the Cliff Janeway series, a great series about retired police detective-turned-used-bookseller Janeway. If you haven't read any of the books, I recommend starting with the first, Booked to Die. If you're interested in the world of books and mysteries, you can't do much better than Dunning.
That said, this latest outing doesn't live up to the past titles. First of all, the setting only peripherally involves the world of books this time around. Instead, Dunning's chosen to set it mostly in the world of horse racing. (Perhaps if I cared about horse racing as much as I do books, this might have worked better for me.)
More importantly, the plot just doesn't seem to hold together. The mystery doesn't engage as past books do, and the solution feels tacked on, as if Dunning realized with a few chapters left that he needed to come up with a murderer.
The Bookwoman's Last Fling is only for those Dunning diehards, which I hate to say because the earlier Janeway books (Booked to Die, The Bookman's Wake, The Bookman's Promise and The Sign of the Book) are all top-notch. Another one not to miss is Two O'Clock Eastern Wartime, his mystery set in the world of old time radio during World War II.
Grade: C
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