If you’re a fan of Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone, you’ll probably enjoy Liz Brady’s first Jane Yeats novel, Sudden Blow. Yeats, a Toronto based writer turned amateur detective, has a similar eternal tomboy image.

When Bay Street bad boy Charles Durand is brutally murdered, there’s no shortage of suspects. He was equally despised by the business elite and his family. Everyone who knew Durand had motive for wanting him dead and no one expresses remorse at his untimely passing.

Jane Yeats, corporate exposé writer, is hired by Durand’s sister, Simone Goldberg, to run an investigation parallel to the official one. Goldberg is concerned that Durand’s gay son, William, will be the obvious scapegoat for a homophobic police force. Yeats’s journalistic and personal connections allow her access to information not available to the official investigation. Yeats solves the crime while simultaneously exposing a lot of dirty Bay Street laundry.

Sudden Blow is a competent, but flawed first novel. The language is at times laboured with an excess of vocabulary. Yeats pulls out literary references that seem incongruous with what we know of her character. Many socio-political issues are touched upon but none is addressed in detail. There are aspects of plot that seem derivative and owe more to genre stereotypes than originality. Brady has potential, but tighter editing would have improved the book.

What Sudden Blow lacks stylistically, it makes up for in characterization. Etta, Yeats’s mother, is convincingly portrayed as an aging, nymphomaniacal Dolly Parton wannabe. Charles Durand is a thoroughly dislikable man who consistently alienates those around him. Even minor characters are three-dimensional.

The internal characterization of Yeats succeeds beautifully. She is in constant struggle with herself. Even when she’s pouring on the bravado, we are privy to her insecurity through the first person narrative. Yeats is driven, not by her desire to solve the crime, but by her need to distract herself from mourning her deceased lover.

Like the Grafton series, Brady makes entertaining summer reading for mystery fans who don’t want to be too critical.