Kathleen West is a Minnesota author, a veteran teacher, and an extremely talented and clever writer. This is her fourth book, after “Minor Dramas and Other Catastrophes,” “Are we There Yet?” and “Home or Away.”
Sarah Jones, age 30, has just moved to Minneapolis after ending a long-standing relationship and is getting settled with new friends and a job she loves. She made the friends through DMs and Insta*, finding a group of women called The Sarah Jones Project.
Everyone in the group is named Sarah Jones, so they use their ages when talking to and about each other. (For example 17, 27, 30, 69).They meet monthly to collaborate on various quirky endeavors, their most recent being yarn bombing a well known tree in a park. The yarn bombing garnered quite a bit of attention, both social media and a newspaper interview.
The story is told in a variety of ways: Sometimes with a normal narrative from one or another of the group, sometimes via group texts, police interviews, or video transcripts.
Sarah (30) has even gained new clients at the gym where she works due to the publicity. One day she is working with a new client, George, who happens to be fit yet wants help training for a marathon, when she gets a call from her worried grandmother on the East Coast. A woman named Sarah Jones died in a fall from the Hennepin Avenue bridge. Of course it wasn’t 30, nor anyone else in the group, but one of them, 27, works as a nanny for a prominent Sarah Jones, president of the Federal Reserve Bank. They called her “Fed Sarah,” and she was the dead woman. Of course, the SJP decides they have to solve the mystery, as one of their group, 27, is a bit of a suspect, being the last person to see the victim alive.
George Nightingale, 30’s new client, is actually a new FBI agent on the trail of a woman committing fraud. The criminal often targets women who have inherited large amounts of money from recently deceased relatives. He is following the SJP as the name Sarah Jones is one of his clues. Now George’s case has become murder.
George and Sarah 30 are becoming close, when 17 becomes suspicious of one of the group, and she turns to 69 for help.
I’d say that 17 and 69 are my two favorite characters. I hope that they (and also 30 and George) can continue to have adventures and work on crimes in future books.
(* Direct messages, usually on Facebook, and Instagram. My MUCH older husband insisted I add this note!)
