Diane Vallere continues her Madison Night series in The Decorator Who Knew Too Much. Going with Hudson, her handyman – turned romantic interest, to Palm Springs, where Hudson’s sister lives, to help his brother-in-law, Jimmy, with a project designing a project that Madison will design the interior of. As Madison and Hudson almost reach Emma’s house, an SUV runs them off the road, turning their rental car on its side. That night, Madison wakes up screaming and has to admit to Hudson that she has been having similar nightmares ever since the scary and dramatic events that concluded With Vics You Get Eggroll. Then the next day, as the work team goes to start their planning of the job, Madison sees the head of a drowned man in the water, but the police can’t locate anyone, causing Jimmy to get angry at Madison for costing him a full day’s worth of wages when his employees can’t work.
Madison finds out that the local police have run a background check on her, even talking to Tex, who has been promoted to captain from lieutenant and vouches for Madison wholeheartedly. Knowing that the trauma Madison went through has to be upsetting, Officer Buchanan refers her to a local psychologist, and evidence starts piling up against the doctor. Then while Madison tries to move on with her life, she gets news that Hudson and Jimmy have been rushed to the ER after being beaten up.
This book starts a little slowly, with details lingering on the dark ending to the previous book. But it speeds up, with details of Madison’s drama unfolding first slowly and then more rapidly, leaving us questioning which details pertain to the crime and which are red herrings. I did find myself missing the frequent interactions between Madison and Tex, with all their verbal interplay, found in the first three books. In this book, Tex appears only on the phone with Madison. The love triangle among Madison, Tex, and Hudson is unable to develop as well as in the previous books when they are separated in this book.
Susie Berneis performs the audio version of this book. She does a good job reading the book and playing the part of Madison. I do have one complaint about the quality of the recording. Whenever Berneis voices a man, the volume drops dramatically. It is frustrating because to be able to hear the men, I had to turn the volume up, leading to Madison’s statements becoming extra loud.
I enjoyed The Decorator Who Knew Too Much, but I would have liked more outside details. The first three books, especially the first two, contain a lot of delight in the world surrounding Madison. I enjoyed her design shop and all the details of Madison’s Doris Day obsession. I wish this book had more of those kinds of details. I give this book four stars.
Disclaimer: I received this book for free through Audiobook Jukebox, but that in no way affected the content of my review.
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I enjoyed this one too. Did you feel like it was a mistake when Madison said she’d been involved with a married man? I thought That Touch of Ink had revealed that to have been a lie Brad told in order to break things off, but I could’ve misinterpreted that.
Yes, it waa revealed that he wasn’t truly married. It might have been an error, or it might just be a reflection of how Madison saw herself for the several years before she learned the truth.
I’m noticing in general that books nowadays seem to have a lot more inconsistencies. Self publishing puts a lot more onus on the author to do a lot more of the editing, but even those published by reputable publishers have glaring errors. I guess we need better editors out there!