Clues are hard to come by, with the only leads being the fraught last words and a few nondescript matchbooks in the victim’s overcoat. Their investigation is halted when Detective Jack Lawson of the New York Police Department arrives, immediately ruffling Viviana’s feathers and bumping chests with Tommy, who he nearly arrested for murder just months earlier. The two know there’s more to the story, but there are other pressing matters at hand.
Clients are clamoring to get the detectives to work on their cases: a man is being blackmailed by a criminal who only writes in code, Tommy’s old friend needs his fiancée tailed, and an investment banker has mysteriously vanished. To add to their work load, Viviana knows something strange is happening at her boarding house. Will of all this—plus planning for a wedding—be too much for one Girl Friday? (Summary via Goodreads)
Viviana Valentine and the Ticking Clock is the third book in the Girl Friday Mystery series by Emily J. Edwards and Edwards knows how to whisk readers away to New York City in the 1950's with ease...
Viviana Valentine works with her fiance, Tommy, in his private investigation office. She started off as his secretary and worked her way up to private investigator then fiance. Betty, Viviana's one roommate at the woman's boarding house where they live is currently taking time off from being a nurse and is working for
Tommy and Viviana as their secretary.
In Viviana Valentine and the Ticking Clock Viviana and Tommy are on their way to Time's Square on New's Year Eve to partake in the festivities but do not make it there when they witness a stabbing in an alley. Viviana stays to try to save the stabbed victim and Tommy takes off after the man who did the stabbing. Unfortunately Tommy loses the guy in the crowds and Viviana cannot save the victim. The victim has no identification and mumbles an apology to Frankie.
Even though this isn't their case, they know that they are going to look into the murder as it is a bit personal to them as they witnessed it. But they do have bills to pay so they take on other cases. Mr. Floristan has hired them because he received a message in code and he cannot figure it out....this will lead them down a crazy path that will require assistance from Dottie, another roommate at the boarding house. Then Mr. Bowen who works at a bank hires them to find an employee who hasn't shown up for work for a while and the outcome of that will be nothing that they could have imagined. And then the last case is a friend of Tommy's, Mort, who wants them to trail his fiance when she goes out to see who she is meeting as he thinks she is cheating on him ... this one will make readers laugh.
Viviana and Tommy have their hands full trampsing around New York City in the cold winter weather trying to solve the cases they are hired for as well as the stabbed victim they witnessed. And things at Mrs. K's boarding house are unsettling as well as they are working on the third floor apartment to turn it into something that Viviana and Tommy can live in once they are married and Mrs. K's brother is trying to get her and her son Olek to move somewhere safer. And Viviana is trying to figure out the wedding and meeting Tommy's family......
Readers will love this latest book in this series as well as the previous two books. Readers will totally want Viviana's energy and spunk !! And you cannot help but LOVE all of the relationships and even the cases are entertaining in their own way.
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