YA specialist Cosimano cuts dexterously between Finn’s adventures as a hit woman, her deeply iffy romance with Fairfax County Detective Nicholas Anthony, and the domestic crises that keep on piling up as if nothing had ever happened to disturb them. Everything seems to have worked out improbably well until Finn, who really does need the money, is offered an even bigger purse for killing someone else considerably more savvy and dangerous. The only bright spots are that Veronica, the accounting-student nanny Steven just laid off without warning Finn in advance, comes upon the scene ready and eager to help and that Steven owns a sod farm where the conspirators can bury the body without telling him. Of course Finn has no intention of going through with this harebrained scheme, but a series of unlikely miscues ends with Harris Mickler dead in her garage with every indication that she’s murdered him. What stuns Finn is the way Patricia communicates her hatred for her husband: She offers Finn $50,000 to kill him. He’s a blackmailer and serial rapist who’s beaten his wife repeatedly. So she’s not entirely surprised when Patricia Mickler, overhearing her chatting with her agent in the local Panera about her latest work in progress, indicates that her own husband is even worse. Struggling romantic suspense novelist Finlay Donovan doesn’t think much of her ex-husband, Steven, who’s been nickel-and-diming her ever since she dumped him over his affair with Theresa Hall, the realtor who’s since become his fiancee. A suburban Virginia divorcée struggles with that classic dilemma: What should she do when she’s offered a fat paycheck to kill a complete stranger?

Finlay donovan book 3