Keeping Bad Company

I started reading another series by Ann Grangers and discovered the Varady series only when I'd read all her other books. I honestly prefer the Varady series. "Detective" Fran Varady is a great character -- and so real it's hard to believe that she doesn't exist. Varady is just surviving as a young woman on her own in the world. Her mother abandoned the family when she was a child, her grandmother and father are dead, and she has no other family. She ended up on her own at 16 and since then has struggled to survive, living in abandoned houses, taking various temporary low-paying jobs, and solving mysteries on the side. She's gutsy, doesn't like the police very much, and is compassionate to people that are looked down on by everyone else. Her best friend is Ganesh, an Indian who works for his family -- first his parents, then his uncle -- in their shops. Gan and Fran don't have a romantic relationship (it would kill his family, I suspect) but are best friends. This story begins with Fran sitting at a train station waiting to be picked up by Ganesh. She starts talking to a bum and gives him some money for a cup of coffee. He tells her about an abduction he's seen. She insists he go to the police with his story, but he doesn't want to. He agrees to meet her the next day, when she will accompany him, but he doesn't show up. So Fran goes to the police herself... and the rest of the story involves her attempt to find out who was abducted and where the woman is being held. It gets more complicated than that, but I don't want to reveal too much. The characterizations are great in this series -- people and places so alive that you feel like you're right there, plus the plotting is very well done.

I just finished listening to the unabridged audio book version of Keeping Bad Company, read by Kim Hicks. I think this, the second Fran Varady crime novel, is a better novel than the first one was. I also think that this audiobook features the perfect reader for this work. Ms. Hicks is enormously talented and accomplished; she provides a seamless and lively narration of this tale which never distracts from the story in the process of bringing it to life and keeping it moving along at a fast pace. This is what audiobooks should be like and sometimes, alas, are not.

This is the second in the series featuring Fran Varady, a young amateur sleuth in London. While the series had a slow start in Asking for Trouble, that book showed some promise as to how Fran would develop and the author lives up to this promise in Keeping Bad Company. Fran's character is developed and she remains the core and focus of the story. There is an intelligent plot, albeit somewhat predictable. It would be interesting to see Fran develop a harder edge in the future while retaining her youthful honesty.