Eh. This one was just 'ok'. It's a first in a series, which are sometimes a bit rough, but I found nothing to like or dislike about any of the characters. I got very little sense of place and worst of all, I figured out 'whodunit' from their first appearance in the book and nothing along the way ever made me wonder if I was right or wrong. Very little mystery to this story. ( )

Sink Trap by Christy Evans is the first of the Georgina Neverall mystery series. Set in Oregon, it follows an apprentice plumber (and washout of the dot-com madness) as she tries to solve mysteries in her spare time.

There's a real estate boom going on in her town. She and her boss have been hired to fix up an old commercial building and the home of a the town's former librarian who everyone believes has moved out of state. That is until Georgiana finds the librarian's favorite brooch clogging a sink.

Now from here on it's a pretty standard cosy mystery. The character and her shtick have been introduced. Her supporting characters, her town, and the potential murderers have been paraded by.

From this point on two things have to mesh to make the mystery work: the mystery has to balance clues vs. surprise to keep the reader guessing and the characters and their reactions to situations have be plausible. Those that aren't, need to be explained to some degree of satisfaction.

It's the latter that feel apart for me. First and foremost, the missing librarian is well off financially. Library jobs can pay handsomely but not in the sort of amounts this librarian must have been making. Without a proper explanation (even a tossed in line or two), I'm left wondering why she is the way she is. Her status as a librarian was to mark her as harmless and perhaps an easy victim. But to make the crime worth committing, she also had be wealthy. Thus the mystery hinges on a mix and match set of character attributes without the necessary fleshing out. ( )

A solid mystery with interesting characters. The allusions to old problems were a bit tiring (sounds like the issues are the plot device for book #2) and I wasn't a fan of the romance with the old beau, but I would certainly pick up the next book. ( )

This is the first book in the Georgiana Neverall cosy series. She's a former corporate type who gave it all and moved back home to her small town in Oregon to become an apprentice plumber, much to the chagrin of her mother, a hard-charging Type A real estate agent.

She's working on a job at the Martha Tepper house when she finds a brooch in the pipes, which ordinarily wouldn't seem odd -- people lose jewellery down their sinks all the time, right? But Martha was literally never seen without this brooch as it had much sentimental attachment for her. Georgie is convinced that something must be wrong here, although everyone shrugs this off as Martha told everyone that she was moving away.

As Georgie continues to work in the Tepper house, she begins to think the job is jinxed - a toilet breaks and falls on her foot while she's moving it, her boss falls on a broken step while walking to the basement, etc. And that's all before they discover the bloody rag and the bullet shell hidden in the basement wall.

Assisting Georgie are her best friend (who also owns a dog grooming shop, which comes in handy, since Georgie owns two dogs who often need bathing!), her high school sweetheart (who may be more interested in local politics than in her), and her boss' wife (who was close to Martha).

This was a great cozy with good pacing, fun humour, and colourful characters. I liked that each chapter opened with common sense tips about plumbing that everyone can use, and the end of the book had a list of tools that everyone should have in the toolbox. That being said, this book wasn't full of technical jargon, and people who aren't DIYers could easily follow the plot. I'll definitely be checking out the rest of this series. ( )

First Line: "Georgiana? Georgiana Neverall, is that you under there?"

Former computer security expert Georgiana Neverall is now a plumber's apprentice and is enjoying every minute of it until she finds Martha Tepper's favorite brooch clogging a drain in an old warehouse. No one else seems to think it's a big deal, so Georgiana decides to do a bit of sleuthing on her own. It's not long at all before she needs more than a bit of plumber's tape and a wrench to keep out of danger.

This is a light, fun mystery with plenty in it to bring me back for more. Georgiana isn't afraid of hard work and brings a welcome sense of humor to her new profession: "Plumbers, in my limited experience, spent an inordinate amount of time underneath sinks.... Lately, I identified everyone by their shoes." She's coming down from the high anxiety of her former business and learning to like the woman she's becoming. She's enjoying life being owned by her two Airedales, Daisy and Buddha, and after all those childhood summers camped out in the mystery section of the local library, Georgiana has learned to be observant and notice significant details.

The only two real drawbacks to me were Georgiana's nagging, fault finding mother, and the plain and simple fact that everyone else took so long to figure out that Martha Tepper hadn't retired to Arizona.

It's common for most cozy mysteries to have some sort of theme and recipes or helpful tips. To be honest, for the most part, I tend to skim over them all because they hold very little interest for me. I have to make an exception for Sink Trap. I found Evans' plumbing tips to be interesting and worthwhile.

A main character I'd like to invite over for coffee (and not to take a look at that dripping faucet), two great dogs, a fun cast of secondary characters, an interesting whodunit to solve and free plumbing tips? Where's the next book in this series? ( )