Elle Cosimano

Finlay Donovan Is Killing It opens with a struggling novelist discussing her plot over lunch, being overheard, and being handed an envelope of cash by a woman who assumes she is a contract killer.

Cosimano keeps the farce tight, with the ex-husband, the childcare and the unpaid bills doing as much work as the crime. She wrote young adult thrillers first.

The series has kept going without the joke wearing through, mostly because Finlay stays a genuinely harassed single mother rather than becoming competent at murder.