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In her ninth Carlotta Carlyle mystery, Linda Barnes sends the red-headed, six-foot tall private investigator undercover on a Big Dig. The place is Boston, " … the Big Dig, formally known as the Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel Project, [is] the biggest urban construction project in the history of the modern world, no less, a mega-dollar boondoggle to some, a brilliant and farsighted plan for Boston's transportation future to others."
In response to a call to the fraud tip line, Carlotta is hired by her buddy ex-cop cum security businessman, to ferret out what is really happening on the various construction site locations. When she gets to her third job site, she is hired as a secretary, which puts her in the office and allows her to snoop in files and records. But, the CFO and CEO of Horgan's Construction are having problems that far exceed those on the site. At first, Carlyle thinks they are having marital difficulties; then, she slowly learns that they are caught up in a far more nefarious plot.
Carlotta, who is not above moonlighting as a cab driver when she needs to pick up a few bucks, decides to take a second assignment: find a missing woman named Veronica. And here is where the book begins to fall apart.
Linda Barnes is known for her gritty noir-like mysteries, but in the BIG DIG, she asks readers to buy into a truly unbelievable plot full of holes you could drive an earth mover through. And, by the time she delivers the denouement, so much ancillary activity has taken place that it is very difficult to take anything that happens afterward seriously.
In a previous book Carlyle is shot, and she keeps referring to her scar and the fact that it interferes with her mobility. Unfortunately, the BIG DIG has the same problem. It is stagnant and full of annoying redundancies, not the best Barnes can offer by a long shot.
--- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum
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