Hot Button by Kylie Logan

Hot Button by Kylie Logan ISBN-13: 9780425251355 Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime Released: June 5, 2012

Source: Review copy from the publisher.

Book Description, Modified from Back Cover:
As chairwoman of an international conference for button collectors, Josie has plenty to worry about. Between greeting collectors, overseeing the dinner cruise, and making sure the conference runs smoothly (which it isn't), she has to attend to the many demands of the guest of honor, Thad Wyant.

When Thad is found dead in a hotel linen room, Detective Nevin Riley asks Josie to help him solve the case. Mr. Wyant’s historic Geronimo button has gone missing. Josie knows only too well how many enemies Mr. Wyant has made in the small and peculiar world of button collectors, so it's no easy task to discover whodunit.


My Review:
Hot Button is a cozy mystery about button collecting. This book was the second in the series, but you don't need to read the first novel to understand this one and this one didn't spoil the mystery in the first novel. There was some information about button collecting, but not as much as I expected. I think I learned more about running a conference.

Josie was so willing to believe whatever she's told (unless it's said by her ex-husband) that I wondered how she could be an effective amateur detective. I even laughed when another character described her as perceptive as she's the least perceptive cozy heroine I've come across. I saw the "twist" about Thad coming from the first few pages, and the same for the "twist" about the constant mishaps. She had all the needed information, yet she needed her boyfriend police detective to point these things out, and even then she hardly believed him.

Josie functioned more as an information gatherer for her boyfriend, and then an information disperser for him in an effort to flush out the whodunit. I was pretty certain of whodunit. The author had written Josie into a spot that would have been hard to get her back out of if it was someone else, and I was correct in my guess. Josie didn't have this same perspective so understandably only figured out whodunit when her boyfriend's trap finally worked and the killer confessed.

Josie was likable enough, but I felt she was irresponsible to basically leave her job of running the conference in order to "help" with the murder. Anyone at the conference could have provided the needed information, and she knew things were going wrong at the conference that needed her attention. I also didn't think very highly of her detective boyfriend who was basically asking for her help because it was the only way to get to spend some time with her. Yet he knew that taking her from her duties was damaging her reputation. His actions often came across as selfish, in my opinion.

Josie also felt like she was personally responsible for making everyone happy. While I know someone like this, I didn't feel particularly drawn to spend more time with such a needy, gullible character.

There was no sex. There was some fake bad language and a minor amount of explicit bad language. One of the main suspects was a homosexual. (Token homosexual characters seem to be the latest "must have" in cozy mysteries for some reason.) He does kiss his boyfriend in the story. Overall, this didn't really turn out to be my type of book, but I'm sure others will enjoy it.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


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