Karen E. Olson, Dead of the Day

Dead of the Day is the third installment in Karen Olson's series featuring Annie Seymour, a thirty-something crime reporter with the New Haven Herald. This time around, Annie needs to unravel a complex of crimes somehow connected to New Haven's illegal immigrant population and to bee research: the apparent murder of a Hispanic male whose bee-stung body is fished out of the harbor, a drive-by shooting targeting the city's chief of police, a break-in at Annie's mother's house, and more. Olson does a great job of tying all the threads together without losing readers in the process.

As in previous outings, Annie tries to wrangle information from her old boyfriend, detective Tom Behr, and she is again aided by private investigator Vinnie DeLucia. Vinnie's younger brother Rocco joins the cast this time, creating a fun investigative trio.

Annie seems perpetually hungry in Olson's series, so readers are treated to a tour of New Haven eateries—from Sally's Pizza in Wooster Square to Louis' Lunch to Clark's Dairy, where I used to work. The restaurant mentions are part of what roots Olson's novels so firmly in the New Haven area. Previous installments brought readers to Sleeping Giant and Yale; this time much of the action takes place in Fair Haven. One of the pleasures of these books is how steeped they are in their setting.

In Olson's previous outing, Annie bordered on being too hard-boiled for my taste, but this time she seems to have softened slightly. She's still no ray of sunshine, but she's easier to warm to here.