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Madeline Carter is back for her third outing in Linda Richards’ engaging series featuring the successful stockbroker who chucked her New York life and moved to Los Angeles to become a day trader. Since Madeline’s apartment got blown up in the last book, THE NEXT EX, it makes sense that CALCULATED LOSS opens with Madeline homeless, staying with good friends in Los Angeles while she tries to put her life back together. She’s still vulnerable and healing from the trauma she went through in THE NEXT EX when she receives a telephone call from her ex-sister-in-law, Ann-Marie, informing her that her ex-husband Braydon Gauthier is dead, apparently a suicide. Braydon was a chef, a very good one, when he was married to Madeline and ran a homey restaurant in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Since their divorce, Braydon’s gone on to become a celebrity chef, complete with his own financial empire of cookbooks, television shows and gourmet products. He apparently committed suicide after becoming despondent when a well-known rating agency took away one of his restaurant’s stars. Ann-Marie and her mother don’t believe for a second that Braydon’s death was suicide and ask Madeline to come to Vancouver for his funeral. Though Madeline suspects that grief might be fueling their suspicions, she agrees to come, hops on a plane and immediately finds herself embroiled in a dispute over Braydon’s estate. The business has passed to his current wife’s brother, and Ann-Marie and Braydon’s mother suspect that it may not be running according to sound management principles. Since Madeline has expertise in evaluating businesses and balance sheets, they ask her to take a look at the company’s books and offer her assessment. Madeline agrees to investigate, and as she does, she becomes convinced that not only is Braydon’s company being mismanaged, he was also murdered. Before the book is over, Madeline takes more than a few major risks in order to bring Braydon’s killer to justice. The mystery unfolds in a more or less predictable fashion, but it’s engaging enough. Richards’ descriptions of Vancouver are as rich and beautiful as one of Braydon’s pastries, but in some places the writing begins to sound a little too much like a travelogue. If this was the whole story, it would be enough to justify a pleasant afternoon’s read. But the vivid evocation of Madeline’s grief and her ruminations on what it means to lose someone who was once the center of her world make this book something very special. The writing is raw and affecting and very, very personal. Grab a copy of CALCULATED LOSS and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Anyone who has ever lost someone they loved will find Richards' writing on this difficult subject rings true as a tuning fork.
Reviewed by Carroll Johnson, October 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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