OLIVER TWISTED, An Ivy Meadows Mystery, by Cindy Brown is a delightful romp in the park. The premise is delightful and I adore this Ivy Meadows series. I think there were some lags but overall I found this to be delightful. Recommended.

I really enjoyed this book! It's been a while since I had a book grab me by the face and insist I read right through, but this one did it. It took only a few pages to get fully engaged, and I felt almost physical pain when I had to put it down 40 pages from the end and go to work. The funny thing: I can't really say just why this book got me, and not the last several I've read. The writing, the characters, and the story just seemed to work for me. I liked Ivy, who shows a good balance of solid work as both detective and actress with just enough metaphorical face-plants to keep her human (more goofs as detective than actress, which makes sense as the former is her new profession).

I also liked the mystery. It was complex, and I was unsure who was the perp until very near the end (though there were earlier moments when I fingered the right person, I was always diverted off onto another suspect). The book does a nice job of making you think about family and relationships without making itself into any kind of treatise--these things just matter to the story.

The writing is strong and well-edited, though the discussion of "duct/duck tape" is going to send me off to do some research. The Dickens references throughout (well, it *is* a Dickens cruise) add an element of fun as well as forcing me to dredge up memories of books long past. I admit to remembering the musical Oliver! quite a lot better than the book Oliver Twist. In fact, the least real thing in this book, in my opinion, was Ivy's ability to skim quickly through a Dickens novel or two. That man used a lot of words!

Although this is the 3rd book in the series, it stands alone just fine. I will be going back and reading the first two!

Recommendation:
A great summer read, not too demanding but not total fluff, either. If you are a Dickens fan you'll get some real bonuses out of it (I've read just enough Dickens to catch a lot of the references, but not all).