Humour in a police procedural? Read A Bad Day for Sunshine

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It isn’t often that you come across a police procedural infused with humour. Not just occasional, subtle humour, but full of laugh-out-loud tongue in cheek humour.

I have really been enjoying Darynda Jone’s A Bad Day for Sunshine. Sunshine is the name of the police chief in this small town police procedural featuring the kidnapping of a teenager who is friends with her own daughter.

If you’ve seen Gilmore Girls and enjoyed the verbal repartee between the mother and daughter in that show, you will love A Bad Day for Sunshine. Lightning quick jokes, tones of sarcasm, and a voice similar to that of Stephanie Plum in Janet Evanovich’s books.

Just a warning for sensitive readers that it does have some colourful language in it and one particularly graphic romantic scene.

I am getting close to the end and I want to finish it to find out who the kidnapper is and how the kidnapping was planned and executed—oh, and the mystery in Sunshine’s past—but I also don’t want to get to the end because I have enjoyed it so much.

Auri shook her head, tsking as she headed for the side door. “I swear, Mom. You’d lose your head if that nice Dr. Frankenstein hadn’t bolted it onto your body.”

Darynda Jones, A Bad Day for Sunshine

Sheriff Sunshine Vicram finds her cup o’ joe more than half full when the small village of Del Sol, New Mexico, becomes the center of national attention for a kidnapper on the loose.

Del Sol, New Mexico is known for three things: its fry-an-egg-on-the-cement summers, strong cups of coffee—and, now, a nationwide manhunt? Del Sol native Sunshine Vicram has returned to town as the elected sheriff—thanks to her adorably meddlesome parents who nominated her—and she expects her biggest crime wave to involve an elderly flasher named Doug. But a teenage girl is missing, a kidnapper is on the loose, and all of this is reminding Sunshine why she left Del Sol in the first place. Add to that the trouble at her daughter’s new school, plus and a kidnapped prized rooster named Puff Daddy, and, well, the forecast looks anything but sunny.

But even clouds have their silver linings. This one’s got Levi, Sunshine’s sexy, almost-old-flame, and a fiery-hot US Marshal. With temperatures rising everywhere she turns, Del Sol’s normally cool-minded sheriff is finding herself knee-deep in drama and danger. Can Sunshine face the call of duty—and find the kidnapper who’s terrorizing her beloved hometown—without falling head over high heels in love…or worse?

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