The Missing Ink-Karen E. Olson

The Missing Ink
Karen E. Olson
Obsidian, Jul 2009, $6.99
ISBN: 9780451227461

In Las Vegas, Brett Kavanaugh owns the Painted Lady tattoo parlor. A girl enters her shop to have a devotion tattoo of her fiancé’s name in a heart engraved on her. Brett gives the young girl an appointment but she fails to keep it, which is not unusual as people have second thoughts. Two days later, stoic hard boiled cop Willis shows a picture and asks if Brett seen the girl in the photo; not good with police except her brother Tim, Brett shrugs her shoulders but conceals that is the girl who failed to show up for her appointment.

Tim asks Brett to help investigate the missing girl case because of ties to his sister’s artistic profession. She agrees and as she follows the needles as clues Brett soon finds herself involved with homicide, hotel manager Simon Chase, and of course this being Vegas Elvis.

This is a fun amateur sleuth starring a delightful tour guide who escorts readers to another side of Vegas where tattoo parlors come in all levels of quality and are hygienically safe (or not). The story line is fast-paced from the moment the cop arrives at the Painted Lady with Brett’s attitude established when she calmly explains this is a tattoo shop not a brothel to his looking for a girl comment. Fans will enjoy THE MISSING INK as Brett tattoos Sin City’s underbelly.

Harriet Klausner