Penny For Your Thoughts by Nicky James
This fifth – and final – book in Nicky James’ Shadowy Solutions series finds Diem and Tallus investigating a crime that strikes a bit close to home when they’re asked to look into a scammer who is stealing money from the elderly and infirm. As always, the author does a great job of balancing the suspense plot with the ongoing character and relationship development as Diem continues to struggle with his addictions (booze and nicotine) even though he and Tallus are solid and his life is going way better than he’d ever thought it could.
When Penny For Your Thoughts begins, Tallus is organising a birthday party for Diem’s beloved Nana, who will be turning ninety-three this year and who is, sadly, losing more of her memories every day. She almost never recognises Diem now, seeing only his resemblance to her late husband, but seemingly happy living in her past for however long she has left. On one of their visits to the home where she now lives, Tallus meets another of the inhabitants, a gentleman named Elwood Scarrow – sharp as a tack and feisty with it – who starts teling him about how he’s swimming in the worldwide ocean and asked Google to find him a girlfriend – and how he now has three of them. Vaguely amused, Tallus doesn’t ask any of the thousand questions he has bubbling up, sees Diem is ready to leave and says his goodbyes.
A day or so later, it turns out that Elwood’s new internet obsession is not so benign when Elwood’s son, Ben, contacts Diem and explains that his father has been scammed out of over thirty thousand dollars. He’s reported it to the police, but they’ve more or less told him there’s nothing they can do and have shelved the case. But Ben wants to find out who is behind it, even if he never recovers the money.
Relieved to have something to investigate that isn’t a cheating spouse for once, Diem takes the case, discovering that Ellwood’s laptop was given to him by his grandson, Kael, who also set up his banking apps and showed him how to use them. But there’s a hitch. Kael is studying abroad and hasn’t been home in over a year, so whoever is showing up on the home’s security footage – while he certainly looks enough like Kael to be convincing – can’t actually be Elwood’s grandson.
As Diem and Tallus start digging deeper, they learn that this is just one of many similar scams being perpetrated on elderly, vulnerable people by someone whose operation is clearly pretty widespread. And there’s another surprise is in store, becausewhen Diem manages to track down the young man who had posed as Kael, he realises he knows him; over a year earlier, when he’d been investigating a fake psychic (in The Power of the Mind) he’d met and felt an immediate kinship with a surly, angry teenager named Darcy, recognising himself at that age, boiling with rage with nowhere for it to go and on the cusp of disaster. Impulsively, Diem had offered the boy his card and told him to get in touch if he ever wanted to learn how to punch a bag – but he never heard from him again. Now here he is, nineteen years old, living in a shitty apartment one step away from being a crack-den, with little money, a shitty job that barely pays the rent and no prospect of anything better; he’s one of those kids who falls through the cracks and turns to desperate measures in the attempt to just keep existing, and Diem’s protective instincts are fully engaged. He doesn’t know how yet, but he wants to help, and even though Darcy is a smart-mouthed little shit who keeps lying to him, Diem recognises the constant pushback as the sign of someone who doesn’t want to be pitied or thought weak or useless… the same feelings he’s been dealing with himself for most of his life.
The suspense plot is topical, well thought-out and skilfully executed with enough red-herrings, dead-ends and twists to keep things interesting, although it’s perhaps not quite as complex as some of the others I’ve read by this author. What really hooked me was the way Diem is so slowly coming to accept himself and working so hard to be better. He’s spent his life battling his demons alone (mostly) and here, he finally and seriously acknowledges the truth of his addictions and reaches out for help – and in a wonderful circle back to where it all began, it’s Aslan Doyle, whom we first met as a struggling alcoholic and watched make hard choices to fight his own addiction, who is there for Diem and acts as his sponsor.
Tallus is still very much Tallus – snarky, fashion-conscious, intuitive and sometimes a bit too impulsive for his own good – but he feels more mature now, more settled and confident in what he and Diem are to each other. He’s so tuned-in to Diem and has become so much better at knowing when to push and when to leave things alone, and I love that they’re all about the little things, the small gestures and things they do to take care of each other that never lets the other forget that they’re truly seen. They’ve come such a long way from where they started, and the relationship development has been stellar – from reluctant and, in Diem’s case, slightly antagonistic fuck-buddies to two people who simply get each other on every level and who are there for each other in whatever way is needed.
There isn’t a huge supporting cast here. Darcy is the main secondary character, but there are cameos from Aslan and from Costa Ruiz, who is about to become a dad for the third time, and we’re properly introduced to Tallus’ step-father, Heath, who is more of a father to Tallus than his bio-dad ever was. He’s a kind, decent man who intuits that Diem might need a friend he can be quiet with, one who won’t bother him with endless chatter – and reaches out to offer him exactly that. Watching Diem work to overcome his challenges, finding love, arriving at a place where he has the self-confidence to be able to act as mentor to a ‘lost boy’, and finding friends and family who accept him for who he is has been wonderful to read.
Penny For Your Thoughts is the final full-length novel in the Shadowy Solutions series. The author says that we will see Diem and Tallus again in a novella to round things off, but as things stand, Nicky James has taken her guys on one hell of a journey and leaves them in a really good place – winning against the bad guys and happily in love. And what could be better than that?