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Our Assessment:
B- : plods along decently enough, but manages little more See our review for fuller assessment.
From the Reviews: - Return to top of the page - The complete review's Review:
The World's Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant is narrated by that 'just okay assistant', Olivia Blunt, and begins with her hiring-interview (which she arrives (one minute) late to, and which doesn't seem to go particularly well -- though obviously well enough, since she gets the job).
Olivia's previous job was as fact-checker for an online news bureau, and now she is: "an assistant to the most famous PI in America !" Aubrey Merritt.
The New York City-based Merritt Investigation Agency apparently specializes in high-profile crimes, but it isn't much of an apprenticeship for Olivia at first, with her spending almost all her time answering the phone and the like.
I opened my laptop and pulled up the photo labeled "The Bungalow." I scrolled to Victoria's datebook, then to July twenty-ninth, the day of her party.She doesn't mention there what she sees on the computer, and the next chapter has her jumping into action, the information still not revealed -- an annoying coyness when otherwise throughout Olivia had been consistently straightforward and (true to her name) blunt. (This chapter-ending-tease -- that's then left dangling, unrevealed for too long -- is annoying enough in any mystery, but even more so when it comes out of the blue as it does here, in a narrative that hadn't pulled this sort of thing before.) Tully pulls out an even more tired mystery-standard for the denouement, as, as Merritt tells Olivia: The reading of the will is scheduled for this morning at ten o'clock. To avoid disrupting the resort's normal business, it will take place at the Bungalow. All the relevant parties will be there, as will Detective Jim Clemmons and a cadre of officers. I'll name Victoria's murderer then.This approach may be familiar from old mystery novels and 1970s TV detective shows, but surely is not how things should be (or generally are) done: surely the police should simply be informed and the guilty party arrested. No need for a show. (Before this happens Olivia also gets herself in a spot of considerable trouble where the obvious course of action would also be to immediately contact the police, but she failed to do so.) But Tully wants to give Merritt a chance to put on a dramatic show -- indeed, the first chapter after the reading of the will is titled: 'Aubrey Merritt Takes the Stage', and then, in front of a captive audience, for several chapters after that she goes through the investigative process and how she reached her conclusion -- before finally revealing the guilty party. It's a strange narrative switch. Olivia is still narrating, and comments some along the way as Merritt does her spiel, but basically all the aspects of the case are now presented by Merritt. It's a decent enough summing-up, but makes more of a case for Merritt's showmanship than her supposed detecting-brilliance . As for the resolution of the case itself -- it's fine. Tully juggles a lot of suspects, and does resort a bit much to bursts of anger from many of them -- there are lots of chips on lots of shoulders here --, but there's a decent little twist regarding the note that was found when Victoria died, and while readers aren't given enough information to figure out who the killer is on their own, the explanations are satisfying enough. Merritt also diagnoses some of Olivia's weaknesses -- "Your starry-eyed idealism will be a liability. So will your empathy" -- though really it's that Olivia isn't much of a deep thinker and readily jumps to conclusions without sufficient foundations that would seem to be more problematic. Ultimately, Merritt grades Olivia's work on the case a C+ -- "The C is for basic competence. The plus indicates hope" -- which is a tad generous; indeed, one is left thinking that the world's greatest detective really could hire someone more capable. As to the humor-factor of Olivia's mediocrity, Tully doesn't play that out nearly as much as she might have -- the idea of a 'just okay assistant' has good potential which is under-utilized here. The back-in-New-York domestic elements -- Olivia and her fiancé (and his mother), and their upcoming wedding -- feel more like padding than anything else, but, like Merritt's background, presumably are meant to provide some foundation for later installments in what is surely meant to be a series (as the publisher's publicity page presents the novel as: 'Part of A Merritt & Blunt Mystery'). There's decent potential to much of The World's Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant, but the novel itself feels too obviously (and simply) constructed on familiar mystery elements, and the writing and the characters are too lacking in nuance to lift it beyond that. - M.A.Orthofer, 29 June 2025 - Return to top of the page - The World's Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant:
- Return to top of the page - American author Liza Tully (actually: Elisabeth Brink) was born in 1956. - Return to top of the page -
© 2025 the complete review
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