Jump the Gun

This fluffy little mystery from Zoe Burke is the first of a proposed series starring Beatrice Annabelle Starkey, book sales rep. Unlikely that she would meet the man of her dreams at a book convention in Chicago, but there he is, and even more unlikely is that she agrees to accompany him to Las Vegas for a little vacation after knowing him just one day, but she does. Before they even get unpacked in their luxury suite, she is kidnapped at gunpoint while Mickey is downstairs in the gift shop. Turns out Mickey gets kidnapped too, but they knock out the bad guy and tie him to a table with ....the big roll of dental floss that Annabelle always keeps in her purse. While escaping from this thug, who turns out to be a bent LV policeman, they run into a woman who used to be in the same nursing home as Annabelle's recently deceased Nana. Then they barely escape more bad guys posing as cops by hopping in a cab being driven by a suspended LV policeman. When Annabelle finally has a chance to call home and tell her cat sitter Cassie that she will be a little delayed getting back, the phone in her apartment is answered by yet another policeman who tells her Cassie has been murdered. Mickey and Annabelle hop a flight to San Francisco and, yet another coincidence, the investigating officer is a former college chum of Mickey's. The coincidences keep piling up and it's hard to tell who is on the up and up and who is part of the conspiracy. References to movies are liberally sprinkled throught as Annabelle is a big movie buff. Reminds me of another somewhat preposterous and thoroughly enjoyable book called Agnes and the Hitman. Read both for some light entertainment.