Barnes, Linda. Big Dig. St. Martin’s Press, 2002.
Reason read: to finish the series started in October in honor of autumn in beautiful New England.
Carlotta Carlyle is back. This time she has an assignment to go undercover to monitor rumors of theft on a construction site in the heart of Boston. Only this isn’t your ordinary dig site. This is Boston’s famous Big Dig. Massachusetts residents will remember that tolls paid along the turnpike were supposed to fund this ginormous project to reroute traffic around one of the oldest cities in the nation. Only, the action isn’t hot and heavy enough for Carlotta. She seems to be monitoring the theft of…dirt. She decides to moonlight, taking on a missing persons case. Working two separate jobs seems like a win-win for Carlotta until she gets fired from the Big Dig assignment. Isn’t it ironic that Carlotta discovers that her undercover assignment is directly tied to her on-the-side case, the disappearance of a dog groomer/waitress? Now Carlotta must find a way back onto the Dig assignment to connect the cases and solve them both.
Big Dig is full of twists and turns. Both the events of Waco, Texas and Oklahoma City play a part in the action. Carlotta finds herself back in the presence of an old flame and finds time to fan a new fire.
Confessional: Big Dig is not entirely believable (big shocker). When Carlotta finds a guy hog tied and suffering from a pretty nasty head wound, she is not alarmed. Instead, she takes him home to have sex.
Author fact: Every time I went to look up information about Linda Barnes I kept running into the character from Criminal Minds…
Book trivia: as with all Carlotta Carlyle mysteries, Barnes includes a plethora of real landmarks of Boston in Big Dig.
Playlist: Chris Smither, Frank Sinatra, Robert Johnson, Bonnie Raitt, Joni Mitchell, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Bessie Smith, and Wagner.
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter “New England Novels” (p 177).
~*LunaSea*~ 