Of the many Lisa Gardner books I’ve reviewed for AAR, I’ve graded only one below a B-. It was the third book (Still See You Everywhere) in the Frankie Elkin series. Hoping that was just a fluke, I picked up the fourth in the line, Kiss Her Goodbye, expecting a classic Gardner read. That is not what I got.

Absconded or kidnapped? No one knows, nor do they seem to care. Recent Afghan refugee and young mother Sabera Ahmadi has disappeared into thin air. No one is looking for her. Her (much older) husband, Isaad, thinks she’s simply left him, and the police won’t open a case without his say-so. However, her friend, Aliah, insists that Sabera would never have taken off without her four-year-old daughter, Zahara. Since she can’t get the authorities to search, Aliah seeks out private aid.

Frankie was supposed to settle down. Or at least try. That’s how we left things at the end of the last book. But when she receives a call from Aliah asking for help, she packs up and heads to Arizona. First, she has to find a place to stay. Enter deux ex machina number one, a gamer millionaire in search of someone to provide live-in care for his exotic pets – a giant five-foot-long, sharp-toothed iguana named Petunia and a group of baby ball pythons and their mother, Marge. They need to be kept apart at all times lest they try to eat each other.

Now Frankie has a mansion and a chauffeur named Daryl at her disposal; all she has to do is find Sabera. The first clue is dropped into her lap: a video showing Sabera walking away from the scene of a brutal double murder. It would seem there’s much more to the Ahmadi situation than Frankie was initially led to believe.

There is. This is a magic family. Sabera is not just a gifted linguist, but also possesses skills I’ve never heard of before. Zahara is little but can remember absolutely everything; what she hears, what she sees – every detail is imprinted into her brain. Isaad is a genius mathematician. That’s just the surface. What lies beneath could literally get them all killed.

As more disappearances occur and the people who’ve joined the hunt for Sabera vanish one by one, Frankie finds herself asking an unusual question. Is she really looking for the victim – or the villain?

The Frankie Elkin books have veered into a genre I’ve never encountered before: gritty cozy. They combine the violence, dark backstory, and dubious heroes of the mystery genre’s edgier styles with the fluffy solutions and quirky sidekicks of the cozy genre. These two contradictory treatments don’t mix well.

The Ahmadi family has a terrible history, from the tough times they faced in Afghanistan as modern, liberal Kabul fell to the Taliban and the residents were forced to flee for their lives, to the complete horror of the refugee camps and the no less complicated (and occasionally equally dangerous) transition to the United States. The author dumps a lot of information on us regarding the desperation of the fleeing families and how awful the situation in Afghanistan is for many, but she fails to use her strongest tool to get us to care – her characters. Isaad is presented in a very contradictory manner – a middle-aged man who likes, uses, and abuses young women, yet also serves as a terrific paternal figure who teaches math to all the little kids in the camp and becomes a champion for those young minds. Frankly, I couldn’t stand Sabera, whose endless questionable decisions cost others their lives. Aliah is initially quite delightful, but eventually devolves into being self-serving and stuck in the past. It’s hard to care about what happened to them before and is continuing to occur in the present when it’s so clear that Sabera is at least partly responsible for all of it.

Conversely, the American characters come across as fantastic. Everyone – the social workers, the volunteers, the community organizers – who works with the refugee organizations are just terrific, caring, devoted, generous individuals. Then we have the folks at the manor. Ginny, the Black transgender cook/housekeeper of the mansion where Frankie is staying, is street-smart but gooey. A natural caregiver with a good radar for who to and not to trust, she takes to Frankie almost instantly. Roberta, the Hispanic parole officer for Daryl, is tough yet kind and not above bending rules to do what she believes is right. Daryl is brave, stalwart, true yada yada yada, but with enough of a past to make him interesting rather than just heroic. Bart, the owner of the mansion, is a saint. Not only does he hire people most wouldn’t, but he also allows them to use his house however they please, endanger his allegedly beloved pets, utilize his resources for their own personal aims, and says nary a word when they turn his home into a crime scene.

The entire scenario, including how Frankie got the job, why Frankie got the job, and how everyone there puts her needs above their own after just a few days’ acquaintance, is ludicrous. The author had to wave a magic wand to make it all work.

Another big problem is the crime-solving. The strength of a cozy normally comes from the lead’s ties to their community. It’s why they know things the cops don’t; they’re privy to a lot of gossip or town lore that legitimate policing doesn’t have or won’t follow up on. Frankie has none of her own resources, nor does she have any ties to the community. People open up to her because it’s a novel, not because in real life they would share that kind of information with a complete stranger.

Gardner’s prose is good and her pacing is decently brisk, but the magical elements surrounding Sabera’s linguistic talents, the endless deus ex machinas used to keep the story moving, the odd combination of gritty and cutesy, and the sheer unbelievable nature of the story make Kiss Her Goodbye a book I can’t recommend.