Button Holed
By Kylie Logan
Paperback, 282 pages, $7.99

Button, button, who used a swan-head buttonhook to kill a popular actress in, of all places, a button shop?

If you think a button store and a button collector as a main character might not be a combination that will carry readers happily through 282 pages of this first in a series, you'd be wrong. If you don’t give this new button collecting series a read, you’re really missing out on a unique and fun adventure.

Because here's how it starts: “Here’s the thing about walking into your button shop at five in the morning and running smack into a hulk of a guy wearing a black ski mask: it tends to catch a girl a little off guard.”

And that’s just the fast-paced opening of this new series featuring Josie Giancola, who has recently opened her own button business Button Box in Chicago.

“Let’s face it, most people hear button collector and they think old fuddy-duddy. We could give buttons a whole new image.”

Josie gets it that interest in her profession isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and that making money selling antique and collectible buttons isn’t exactly on par with selling stocks and bonds, but author Kylie Logan makes this tale work in its debut ‘Button Holed.’

Besides, how can you not love someone in the “grip of button fever. It’s not a disease that will ever be listed on one of those medical diagnosis Websites, but to a button collector, it’s as real as any case of chicken pox.”

Josie has a great sense of humor and is surrounded by quirky and likable friends and acquaintances. She also find herself in the midst of some serious glitter and glam when the hottest actress in Hollywood choses her button expertise for her special wedding gown.

So that’s why when she’s murdered in Button Box, the sensational death could turn out to be “the most sensational murder to hit Chicago since the St. Valentine’s Day massacre.”

Plus, there’s a great back story about Josie’s ex-husband who pops in and out of her life when he needs loans to pay off a gambling problem.

The explanations of “moonglow, paperweight and Bimini buttons” add to the story, while not bogging it down, as Logan finds believable ways to incorporate her button theme advancing the plot in rather clever ways.

“Thanks to a Hollywood starlet with a load of glamour, a bigger-than-life personality, and the chops to have paparazzi following at her heels, my reputation as one of the country’s leading purveyors of antique buttons was about to morph into the stuff of legends.”

And for Josie, having an eye for special hand-made studio buttons helps her budding sleuthing abilities when others would be, well, button clueless. You’ll like the hints of a new romance with Chicago cop, Nevin Riley, who tiptoes around his interest in Josie. And she in him.

And yes, I was skeptical of whether Logan could make a button lover out of me with her new series. She succeeded. And I eagerly look forward to ‘Button Kill’ the next installment in this very different and very fun cozy series.

For more information about buttons, you can visit the website of the National Button Society. For more information about the author, aka Casey Daniels, who writes as Kylie Logan for this series, visit her blog, http://www.thelittleblogofmurder.com/.

Lisa Allmendinger is a regional reporter for AnnArbor.com. She can be reached at lisaallmendinger@annarbor.com. In addition, each Wednesday she reviews a cozy mystery in her column called “Cozy Corner.”