cover image Classic Calls the Shots: A Case for Jack Colby, Car Detective

Classic Calls the Shots: A Case for Jack Colby, Car Detective

Amy Myers. Severn, $28.95 (208p) ISBN 978-0-7278-8150-2

Myers’s second whodunit featuring detective Jack Colby who specializes in restoring classic cars (after 2011’s Classic in the Barn) loses gas early on. When a rare 1935 Auburn 851 SC Boattail Speedster vanishes from the Kent set of American director Bill Wade’s new film, Dark Harvest, Colby gets on the case. Wade, whose previous film was a huge success 10 years earlier, worries that someone is out to sabotage Dark Harvest. Colby charms one of the actors, Louise Shaw, in record time, but the pace picks up only after the murder of a person connected with the film. Even then, as the investigator follows leads to a tragedy linked to Wade’s previous movie—the suicide of its star, with whom the director was involved—the plot doesn’t generate much heat. Readers will hope that Myers gives her amiable lead a more exciting case in the next installment. Agent: Dorothy Lumley, the Dorian Literary Agency. (July)