Driven To Ink by Karen E. Olson is the third book in the “Tattoo Shop” mystery series. Publisher: Obsidian, September 2010
Tattoo artist Brett Kavanaugh inks high-class clientele in her Las Vegas shop, The Painted Lady. And when she’s not on the job, she sets her designs on catching killers.
Las Vegas is a rocking place where impersonators of the legendary Rat Pack—Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr.—are alive and well and performing nightly at clubs all over town. Except they’re not all. Alive, that is.
When Brett lends her car to Sylvia Coleman and Bernie Applebaum for a drive-through wedding, she’s not expecting to get it back with a dead body in the trunk—much less one who looks like Dean Martin and sports a clip cord from a tattoo machine around his neck.
As for the newlyweds, they vanish before they can start their honeymoon, so Brett and Jeff, Sylvia’s son, go undercover as bride and groom to sniff out the rat who seems to be targeting the impersonators. Whatever’s going on, it’s not amore.
Brett finds a body in the trunk of her car after she loans it to Sylvia. When Jeff is concerned about his mother’s whereabouts, and despite her brother’s request, Brett once again gets involved in a police investigation. The more Brett gets closer, the more the killer is determined to stop her. I like the growing friendship between Jeff and Brett and her relationship with her brother and friends as they helped with her investigation. The plot, the cast of characters and the non-stop action kept me turning the pages until the killer was revealed with some surprising twists. You don’t have to know anything about tattooing to enjoy this story. This was a good read that left me wanting more.
previously posted on the Cozy Chicks blog