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Bored with their dead-end day jobs, best friends Skip Moore and James Lessor have formed More or Less Investigations, as a part time business venture. Unfortunately, the name says it all. Although they are licensed P.I.s in Florida state, their lack of experience is glaringly obvious when one observes their hit and miss approach to finding and following clues. In TOO MUCH STUFF, the fifth book in Bruns' Stuff Series, Skip and James are approached by the granddaughter of the Florida East Coast Railway Finance Director to find out what happened to a gold shipment that went missing after the hurricane of 1935. Just because the story takes place in Florida it doesn't mean the book fits into what former Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry calls "the Florida Wacko genre" of mystery writing which relies heavily on exotic and eccentric characters. Skip and James's bumbling and humour aside, Don Bruns has done his homework in plotting this book. The 1935 hurricane that destroyed the Florida East Coast Railway and much of the Upper Keys was a tragedy of epic proportions. Nearly 400 people were killed or lost, and the village of Islamorada was totally destroyed. The story reminded me of the kind of mystery that Clive Cussler has used in countless books and should satisfy readers that enjoy a heaping helping of history along with their mystery. Despite the charming naivety of the main characters and their ongoing games of "guess the movie quote" (which I enjoy but many may find irritating), you cannot forgive Bruns for the less than satisfying solution to the secondary mystery thread. It was so obvious to me from the first that I anticipated a brilliant plot twist as a surprise, but it was not to be. Still, the book is entertaining and possesses a vitality that kept me turning pages. It took me a while to put my finger on what was so refreshing about this book, but I finally realized it was the age of our hapless investigators. Excluding juvenile fiction, most mystery protagonists, male or female are world-weary and middle-aged, or at least in their thirties. Bruns' optimistic and somewhat naïve protagonists are young and enthusiastic and add a welcome modern flair befitting a 21st century detective. Take this exchange between the older client and Skip: "…their phone in Fort Lauderdale has been disconnected, letters are returned, and their website has been taken down." Letters and websites. Old school. "You've tried texting, Facebook, Twitter?" Perhaps this is exactly what the mystery genre needs to attract a younger reading audience- younger detectives! §Merrill Young lives on an acre in rural Langley, BC where she has given up trying to win the war on clutter, cat hair and blackberry vines, and has settled for losing as slowly as possible.
Reviewed by Merrill Young, February 2012
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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