"No Dumping Allowed" by L M Ford

"Amanda Danvers stared at the arm sticking out from behind the dumpster" is a great first line which hooked my attention straight away. We are instantly launched into a murder mystery set in a small town in the USA. Amanda, the new owner of a car-wash business where the body has been dumped, investigates whodunnit. Needless to say, she succeeds where the cops fail, unravelling the mystery despite a number of red herrings. 

It is targeted at 12 - 18 years and there are many aspects of this novel which make it suitable, particularly for readers at the younger end of the age range:

• It is very easy to read. The author has a direct style which focuses on the plot, stripping away unnecessary sentences. I would have liked a  little more description to help me better visualise what was going on and I suspect some of the older teenagers would have enjoyed more gore but the author is probably wise to avoid too much detail.
• It is almost inevitable for a murder mystery to have a large cast of characters: suspects, witnesses and the detective and her friends and helpers. Given that the book was deliberately designed to be short, some of these characters were necessarily underused. I would have loved to have more of the golf-playing coroner, for instance. But each of the main characters was distinctive and I never confused them. I suspect that this book is the first of a series; I hope we meet some of the characters again.
• The heroine is clearly an adult and I wondered how easy it would be for some of the younger readers to identify with her. There is a romantic element to the plot but it doesn't progress beyond kissing. Again, older readers might see this as too tame but it seemed appropriate to me.
• There are a couple of scary situations. I would have liked more of a sense of threat but there is a delicate balance to be struck between increasing the tension and scaring the younger readers.
• There were dead ends and in a longer novel there might have been the scope for progressing further down these. Similarly, the size of the book seems to have precluded the classic 'extra twist'.

I found the simplicity of the narration refreshing.

I think my favourite moment came in chapter one when Amanda is pondering how to write a commiserative social media post about the death; among other great lines she rejects are: 

• You can’t wash away bad karma, even at a carwash. 
• Real estate developer ends up with only ten inches of land behind a dumpster. 
• Carwash owner issues reminder: dumping is illegal and so is murder.

My next favourite quote was:

• "Maybe she was just spinning her wheels, but they were her wheels and [she] had a right to spin them if she wanted." (Ch 8)

An unpretentious and straightforward murder mystery.

February 2024

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God