This book was so much fun. Investigative journalist Scout Davis of Byron Bay gets the scoop and solves another crime. This is the second book I have read in this series and I hope there are more. Preferred this one to the first. ( )

I wasn't sure whether this title by 2013 Davitt Award winner Maggie Groff (she scooped the Australian Sisters in Crime pool of Best Novel and Best First novel with MAD MEN, BAD GIRLS a few weeks ago) would actually be my cup of tea. It seemed that it would be "lighter" than my usual crime fiction fare. But then I chose it for my face to face reading group to read in the coming month, so in a sense I was committed.

I did have my doubts in the first 50 pages or so, but then things settled down a bit, and I must admit to enjoying both the plot and the plotting skill. The blurb on the front cover calls sleuth Scout Davis " a successor to Evanovich", and I thought I could detect a bit of Phryne Fisher there too.

I also enjoyed the quirky humour - who would call their cat Chairman Meow? - but underneath it all there is some serious, realistic characterisation and some careful plotting. There are a couple of other humour lines such as the guerilla knitting group that I thought were a bit superfluous but I guess they show another dimension of Scout's character.

I think this series has a future. ( )

The second novel to feature Byron Bay based investigative journalist Scout Davis sees the heroine on the trail of a man thought to have died 30 years previously. She is first contacted by Hermione Longfellow who claims that a man whose photograph appeared in that week’s newspaper was the same Mick O’Leary who had married her sister Nemony in 1983 and was thought to have drowned a few months later while sailing in Sydney Harbour during a freak storm. According to Hermione her sister has been in a deep depression since her husband’s death and she wants Scout to prove that far from being a grieving widow Nemony should be angry about O’Leary’s faked death and potential disappearance with the bulk of her inheritance.

The investigative thread of this book speeds along nicely and is full of suspense, especially the final quarter which sees Scout and her friend Daisy on the trail of their prey in Queensland’s gorgeous Whitsunday Islands. In what is something of a rarity for crime fiction without a murder in sight Groff doese a nice job of making the reader care about the Longfellow sisters and the impact of Mick O’Leary’s sudden appearance then disappearance in their lives and it’s not hard to share the characters’ desire to see the bad guy get his comeuppance. The fact that the entire book takes place against a backdrop of some fantastically depicted locations, especially Byron Bay is a bonus.

An equal amount of this novel’s space is taken up with Scout’s non-investigative activities which includes a secret life as a yarn bomber, a complicated love-life and a sister, four nephews and a brother-in-law who are in a bit of a pickle. Personally I found this all a bit too chick lit-y for my tastes, especially as every time she appeared we got a detailed description of Scout’s outfits (fashion and I are complete strangers), but I am positive a lot of readers are looking for exactly this kind of combination. Scout’s well-rounded home life offers most of the book’s funnier moments and her family, including her faithful feline companion Chairman Meow, and friends are nicely drawn characters.

I do think the book is too long at 360+ pages for what is not a terribly complicated story but the publishing world seems to have universally agreed that bigger is better some time during the last decade and at some point I’m just going to have to accept that I’m the lone voice who still believes that less is more. Overall this is a very readable, very Australian, lighter style crime novel that I’m sure will have a broad appeal.

Good News, Bad News is the second entertaining book by Maggie Groff featuring investigative journalist Scout Davis. Though taking a break after her last case left her with broken ribs, Scout is intrigued when Hermoine Longfellow, one of Byron Bay’s more eccentric characters, approaches her with a recent news article that includes a photo of her sister’s husband, a man presumed drowned more than thirty years ago. A little digging suggests Nemony O’Leary nee Longfellow was the victim of a conman and Scout is on his trail.

Once again, Scout flirts with danger, disaster and romance in this entertaining contemporary mystery. As she traces Nemony’s wayward husband, doing her best to avoid the abrasive Hermoine, she begins to develop a theory involving bigamy, insurance fraud and deception. I really like the way in which Groff allows Scout to unearth the clues that connect the past to the present through realistic investigation – trawling through paperwork, browsing Google and cultivating sources.

In Mad Men, Bad Girls and the Guerilla Knitters Institute (now retitled simply Mad Men, Bad Girls) Scout finally succumbed to the attentions of handsome police detective Rafe Kelly but with the return of her long time lover imminent she has to decide what, or rather who, she wants. Paired with Scout’s sister’s suspicions her husband is having an affair, Groff’s subplots add interest and help to round out Scout’s character. I like that Scout is so well grounded in her family, with her sister, nephews and daughters making regular appearances while the yarn bombing group (GKI) and her quid pro quo relationship with restaurant owner Miles illustrates her ties to the community.

I didn’t think Good News, Bad News had quite the same fast pace or sense of danger that Mad Men, Bad Girls had. Most of the action is condensed into the last chapter or so when Scout travels to Gull Island to get the final piece of evidence needed for her story, however, there is a good balance between lighthearted moments and the more serious themes.

An engaging read to accompany a good cup of tea and a sunny afternoon, Good News, Bad News is an entertaining mystery with authentic characters. ( )