Trouble in Wonderland by Kathi Reed
In Kathi Reed’s Trouble in Wonderland, we return to Annie’s Video and Music Hall for the third installment in the Annie Fillmore mystery series. Our heroine receives an invitation to the prestigious convention hosted by Wonderly Entertainment. Upon her arrival to the hotel room, she’s met with a suspicious blood-like stain next to an even more suspicious chalk outline of what can be assumed to have recently been a dead body. Things spiral from there, and Annie, as usual, is right in the middle.
As in the previous two books, Banking on Trouble and Trouble for Rent, Annie’s seemingly ordinary life is suddenly turned into a real-life murder mystery. She is forced to ask herself, is she following the murders, or are they following her?
All she was hoping for in her hotel room was a nice nap. Instead, she finds herself walking into a secret crime scene. Of course, her next move is to call down to the front desk to see if the stain and chalk outline are, hopefully, some sort of practical joke. To her dismay, this is no joke, and someone was, in fact, murdered in the room she’s now supposed to be staying in. And intriguingly, Dun Wonderly, owner of Wonderly Entertainment, had asked the hotel staff not to allow anyone into that room. Turns out, the front desk had mixed up Annie’s room assignment.
WELL-ROUNDED FEMALE PROTAGONIST
Annie can’t seem to shake the feeling there is more here than meets the eye. Both the hotel and Dun Wonderly are very tight-lipped about it all, despite her questions. As she sets out to find more information, she seems to have triggered a domino effect of events to follow, leaving her no choice but to investigate.
Finding a fun mystery with a well-rounded female protagonist is such a treat, and Annie Fillmore certainly doesn’t disappoint. Annie is such a refreshing character, with a quick wit and a dry sense of humor that keeps you laughing — and forgetting that she’s investigating an actual murder. Annie is much like a dog with a bone. Despite not having much to go on, Annie doesn’t give up until her mystery has been solved, no matter the danger she’s in.
Our amateur sleuth definitely has a knack for inserting herself in certain situations but always manages to investigate her way out. If her career as a video store owner doesn’t work out for some reason, she’d make a great private investigator.
A GRIPPING MYSTERY
Trouble in Wonderland is a compelling and engrossing mystery that kept me guessing until the end. My favorite part of reading mysteries is trying to solve it myself before the truth is revealed; I couldn’t quite put my finger on it with this story, which kept it interesting. And I never would have guessed that the film Pretty Woman would have been the key to cracking the case wide open! (No spoilers here.) Leave it to Annie to find the answer even when the police can’t.
Along with the gripping mystery, this story also left me with a nostalgia for the ‘90s video store experience. Long gone are the days of going to the video store on a Friday night with your parents, picking out the latest Disney VHS, and buying a movie theater pickle from the bin at the checkout.
If you love quick and witty dialogue, badass female sleuths who fly under the radar and by the seat of their pants, and a tale that’s both entertaining and suspenseful, Trouble in Wonderland is the book for you!
About Kathi Reed:
Kathi Reed was born in Brooklyn, grew up in Queens, N.Y. and spent her impressionable years in Briarcliff Manor in Westchester County, N.Y. in the days before houses cost the GDP of a small nation. She attended Lasell College in Boston, and worked in New York City at The New Yorker Magazine, Time-Life, and Random House. She owned a video/music store in the Cincinnati area for nine years; travelled the back roads of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky as a sales rep for a video distributor; and worked as a mortgage loan officer. Her dream was to write, and after years experimenting with alternative methods she realized that if she wanted to have a book published, she had to actually write one. She now lives in Cincinnati, OH, a city that she loves.
