Busted by Diane Kelly
Contemporary cozy mystery with light romance and plenty of humor. 1st in the series.
Marnie Muckleroy is a motorcycle cop in the small Texas town of Jacksburg, where she grew up. Marnie is single and actively looking for romance but the selections in the town aren’t promising. When a mystery man on a Ninja motorbike rides through town, her fantasies spark, but work interferes. Marnie works with Trey, a video game programmer, to help try to find who is stealing the identities of local children.

Marnie is a little bawdry in her self talk, in a flirty and humorous way, often referring to her double d’s. She approaches life and work with an abundance of enthusiasm and verve and a smidge of cynicism. She’s also confident in her police work so following this cozy is entertaining.
I’m not going to spoil the ending, but just say, it’s going to be a lively series and this first book is a great introduction. ( )

I wound up liking Busted a little more than I thought I would after the first chapter or two. Even though the product description on Amazon describes the main character as having "a .38 on her hip and 38DD’s on her chest" (which, to be honest, are pluses in my book), I was kind of expecting the boobiness to be a little more subtle. A few times in the early part of the book, the character points out her endowments (about how her uniform top strained against her assets, people leering at her and making eye contact with her chest, the seat belt being uncomfortable, etc.), to the point where I had to double-check that the author wasn't a guy. (Looking at her bio, as near as I can tell, she's a woman.)

But, being the trooper that I am, I continued reading, and it got better. There was still reference to the bustiness every now and then, but it wasn't as in-your-face as it was early on, and the story got better.

Now that that's out of my system, let's get to the book itself. I actually liked the main character, Captain Marnie Muckleroy of the Jacksville (Texas) Police Department. You find out early on that there's stuff in her past that she doesn't like to talk about, apparently stuff that's related to her time with the Dallas PD and why she quit there and moved back home to Jacksville. A couple of hints about the scars on her arm made a nice red herring, and I was kind of relieved to learn the truth about where they came from. Still a nasty ordeal, but not what I was expecting. The other characters were good, and none of them made me go "Really?". Not having a murder (or any kind of death, really) was a nice change of pace. I thought the solution to who the criminal was, as well as the identity of the mysterious Kawasaki Ninja rider, was obvious well before the end of the book, but it was still worth it to see how the MC (eventually) figured everything out. The only other nit I had with the setting, and this may just be me not knowing how big Jacksville is or how small-town police departments are structured, is how big the police department is and how it's organized. But, like I said, that might just be me.

So, all in all, I thought it was an enjoyable read. ( )