After careers in librarianship and bookselling, Mary Jane Maffini has morphed into a successful and prolific crimewriter with sufficient peer approval tobecome president of the Crime Writers of Canada. In the last three years she’s produced a wealth of short stories, including several award winners, and three novels featuring Ottawa-based victims’ rights lawyer Camilla McPhee.

Little Boy Blues finds McPhee celebrating the departure of her office nemesis Alvin, who’s headed for a new art gallery career. She’s also hoping for a self-indulgently musical Canada Day weekend at Ottawa’s Bluesfest. Both plans are dashed when Alvin’s developmentally challenged younger brother goes missing from his home in Sydney, Nova Scotia. In an attempt to help Alvin, McPhee and her spunky geriatric neighbour Violet Parnell undertake a mad overnight drive in McPhee’s brother-in-law’s cherished new car.

This effort sadly misfires, but McPhee finds herself enmeshed in the mystery of the disappearance and several unexplained, but related, occurrences. Before long she’s back home in the Ottawa heat searching for the missing brother. Eventually McPhee finds herself tracking a killer bent on preserving a murderous long-term cover-up, while she attempts to sort out her tangled romantic involvements and manage to stay alive.

Maffini has made great strides in plot control, pacing, and overall style since her first novel, Speak Ill of the Dead. This latest provides a pleasant and challenging read featuring a doggedly determined, if slightly ditzy, heroine, one supported by well-defined ancillary characters and some engaging subplots.