Berkley
Published July 21, 2026
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
Natasha Mason (just Mason to her friends) and Julia Mann, ex-movie star and former convict, have next to nothing in common other than that they are both recovering alcoholics who met at an AA meeting. Julia is a wealthy and acerbic lawyer who wears classic designer cloths of an earlier era; Mason is a young woman still trying to find her place in life, becoming an assistant to Julia while learning the ropes of private investigation from one of her associates. Together, they solved a murder (in One Death at a Time, 2025) and are ready to tackle their next investigation: Why is Mason’s AA sponsor getting threatening messages and are the strange accidents she keeps having truly accidental or something more sinister?
This is a character-rich cozy series with a team of eccentrics working together to solve crimes as they try to stay sober. Because they and their friends went through dark times, there are plenty of skeletons in their closets, which makes it important to delve into the past to see if the roots of a current crime started there. As they untangle the AA sponsor’s story, they come across a murder investigation that stalled years ago. Meanwhile others close to them are being sabotaged. One by one, they get to the bottom of their multiple mysteries, as the clues they turn up send them in unexpected directions, including to the history of a deadly fire that is reminiscent of the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland that engulfed an artists’ collective and killed dozens of people.
Deadly Does It leavens its story with humor and gentle clashes between Mason and her grumpy former-film-star boss, building up a collection of recurring characters that so typically people cozy series, grounding them in the challenge of staying sober and overcoming the things they did when they weren’t. It’s a fun but not too fluffy setup and is likely to give Julia Mann and Mason a number of investigations in the future.