I think I’m growing tired of these covers of modern cozy mysteries, with their punny titles, cutesy illustrations, and snarky tag lines:

The cover of The Dead Friend Project, Joanna Wallace’s second novel, is almost bland by comparison to others, but it gets the job done of informing you that this is a murder mystery.

Note the spilled wine glass, its contents coating the word “Dead” in bloody relief. Check out both tag lines: front – “Everyone needs a hobby” and back – “The school run can be murder . . . “ If you’re still unclear, see the authorial quote provided by fellow Viper author Janice Hallett: “A proper murder mystery. Pure Class.” Two other writers mention that the book is “funny.” Even the requisite blurb on the back is arch. “It’s time for Beth to uncover what really happened to her best friend. Once she’s put the kids to bed, of course . . . “

There is a murder mystery of sorts, “detected,” in a manner of speaking, by Beth, our first-person, present-tense narrator, who had a Terrible, Horrible Very Bad Day nearly a year ago when her best friend died and her husband left her for her other best friend. Beth had already been well on her way to becoming a rampant alcoholic, but now she has to raise two young boys and an infant daughter by herself, face her old friends at the school run, all of whom seem to have sided with her ex-husband’s new girlfriend, and deal with a loveable dog that loves to eat feces – all while downing two or three bottles of wine a day.

So perhaps Beth is ill-equipped to deal with some new information: on the night Charlotte (why do none of these characters have surnames?) died, supposedly hit by a car while training for a marathon, she had left her toddler son alone in the house.  Beth knows that Charlotte – the perfect mum, the gifted doctor, the greatest friend – would never abandon her child to go for a nighttime run. So . . . what really happened?

As the story of a woman falling apart at the seams, Project is often darkly funny and quite moving. It’s terrifying how one’s grip on life can slip away without one being totally aware of how or why it’s taking place. And it must be shocking to witness this happening to a casual friend, one you’ve come to know primarily through your children. That may explain why, when Beth’s life falls apart, her friendship circle evaporates as well, and all the women she felt closest to become hostile strangers. 

Or is it because one of them murdered Charlotte?

And here’s where The Dead Friend Project runs into trouble. Beth’s got nothing to go on as far as Charlotte’s death is concerned, except a hunch – and rather than turn amateur sleuth and come up with a clever campaign for discovering the truth, she stumbles around (often quite literally, due to the wine) asking the same questions over and over of the other mums. To be fair, Beth’s ineptitude as a clever amateur sleuth makes this feel less like a “cozy: mystery, over which I wouldn’t have wasted my time. Here, she is a more realistic, if infuriating character, someone I really wanted to see get better before I myself gave up on her! But as the detective, the driving force in a murder mystery, she’s all alcoholic fumes. 

And because we follow the whole plot through her sloshed perspective, the other characters never rise much above “types.” Here’s where we move away from The Girl on the Train territory (another narrator driven to drink by a cheating spouse) to that old TV show, Desperate Housewives: if you’ll remember, that series also began with the murder of one of their own, and the ladies left behind are strikingly similar to our clutch of mothers here. There’s Emily, the perfectionist; Fara, who can remain immaculate in her pashmina while raising six children; Danielle, the neurotic mess; and Ana, the new mum who has just moved with her family into Charlotte’s house. 

At every school run and playdate and party, Beth tries without much success to grill her fellow mums Charlotte. For the longest time, the questions never vary because, frankly, Beth’s got nothing. I kept asking myself, why don’t you consider the husbands or other neighbors or someone at the hospital or the school, or the gang of tough boys who hang out around your house . . .? Is it possible that Beth has nothing because there’s nothing to find?

But then there is another death, and Beth uncovers a motive for the killings of both women. This is information that Wallace has cleverly planted in earlier sections of the book. When Beth finally does learn what happened to Charlotte – not through deduction but because on the third page from the end, someone appears out of the blue and gives her new information that will click with readers eager for anything to hold onto. I’ll say that this clarification is very clever, something I should have seen much, much earlier. But it also breaks one of Van Dine’s rules that I particularly care about; in fact, it breaks several of the rules, which even in a modern crime novel should be, er, a crime!

There is a lot of funny stuff here, about parenting and school structures and the general pissiness of life when you have obnoxious kids or friends or exes. A good example is the horrific weekly “Tea and Tots” meetings where mums bring their offspring to bond together over “relaxed chats” about “the everyday stuff we all have inside our homes . . . things that look safe but can be lethal (like) fridge magnets . . . hair straighteners, dishwashers, pen lids, dressing gown cords . . . you know, the everyday objects that don’t look dangerous but can so easily cause choking, scarring, brain damage, paralysis, and death. It’s all going to be very lighthearted.”

Ultimately, however, neither alcoholism nor obsession is particularly funny to me. If you’re rooting for Beth to get over this dark time in her life, Wallace ends on an ambiguous note that suggests that, even armed with the truth, one might never fully recover. Or maybe everything will be fine, and that last line is simply . . . a joke. 

For a more positive take, check out JJ’s review at The Invisible Event.