Private Investigator Cat DeLuca, owner of Chicago’s Pants on Fire Detective Agency, typically concentrates on liars and cheats. But, this time she gets involved in a murder when she trips over a body while running in the park with her dog. The faceless body has a large amount of money in an envelope in a pocket.

She later found out the body was Bernie Love, who grew up in the neighborhood with Cat’s Uncle Joey and was now the finance guy in the Provenza family. Bernie was killed hours before he could get to a safe place in Costa Rica.

As she attempted to locate his identification, a park ranger came along, shot her with a Taser, and stole the body. When the police captain basically blew her off because there was no body, she decided to continue looking for the body. When her brother Rocco and his partner came to the current crime scene to help her out, they located the original crime scene and found that the evidence was tied to her Uncle Joey.

When she wasn’t busy trying to solve the murder, and stay alive, she was preparing to introduce her huge Italian-American family to her future in-laws, and she was missing her FBI-boyfriend who was out of town.

Bye, Bye Love, A Cat Deluca Mystery, was the fourth novel in this humorous cozy series co-written by K.J. Larsen, AKA Kari, Julianne, and Kristen Larsen. The first three books were Liar, Liar; Sticks and Stones; and Some Like it Hot.

This fast-paced, lively novel hit the road running, along with Cat, and never slowed down. While it wasn’t a laugh out loud type of story for me, the humor was plentiful. The large cast was sometimes confusing and I ended up making a list of the main characters to keep everyone straight.

The violence might be a turn-off for some, but it was true to the plot, especially since the author was dealing with notorious Chicago.

The first-person narrative will help readers stay engaged, and the prolific use of, and love for, animals throughout the story softens much of the harshness.

All in all, this book is a welcome addition to the series and fans will certainly look forward to the next mystery.

If you are interested in any of K. J. Larsen's novels, they are available on Amazon

A special thank you goes to Poisoned Pen Press for providing us a complimentary copy of this book for our review.