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The first book in the Theo Bogart series, THE MAN ON THE WASHING MACHINE, was published in 2015, so this second one has been a long time coming. I had wondered if Susan Cox had given up on the series, but the acknowledgments in the second book mention a manuscript being stolen by a cat burglar and a necessity to start the book over, hence the delay. I am left wondering if this is truth or the continuation of a tongue-in-cheek mystery.
In either case, Susan Cox has a sense of humor that shines through even the darkest scenes in her mostly cozy Theo Bogart series. This time around, Theo has taken her role in her San Francisco community's board seriously when she finds a much-despised condo developer dead in her Tesla on the side of the road. At the same time that she is appalled at the death, she is stymied as she attempts to determine whether the electric car is actually still running, providing comic relief. The developer, a lawyer by trade, had been threatening to blackmail Theo about her background, so Theo takes her death as an opportunity to retrieve the file being kept in the law office. Thus begins a mad-cap romp through San Francisco as she is chased by the killer and as more eccentric characters are introduced.
We learn more about her background and her grandfather than was revealed in book one, but Cox does not waste time going through the events of the first book, so for a fuller experience, I would recommend reading WASHING MACHINE before MICROWAVE OVEN. Nonetheless, THE MAN IN THE MICROWAVE OVEN can be read as a standalone. There is a great deal of quirkiness in this book, including a group of semi-retired spies, an obscure Ukrainian orphanage, a reclusive homeless man, a threatening priest, and as one might expect from a San Francisco location, a stereotypical gay coffee-shop owner.
Taking the two books as a whole, Theo is fairly well fleshed out. However, the majority of the characters in MICROWAVE OVEN do not rise above the level of caricature. That said, they are highly entertaining and their roles in Theo's escapade move it along at a quick pace. There is an overall light tone to this book, in spite of several murders both realized and attempted. This book, and the series in general, is a lot of fun, providing a much-appreciated escape from reality.
§ Sharon Mensing, retired educational leader, lives, reads, and enjoys the outdoors in Arizona.
Reviewed by Sharon Mensing, October 2020
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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