No Body No Crime by Tess Sharpe is about being gay and doing crime—the crime in question being murder. In it we follow Mel Tillman, a rural PI, who has been tasked with finding the whereabouts of Chloe Harper, who was her girlfriend when they were teenagers and has been missing for years. On Chloe’s sixteenth birthday years ago, the two of them buried Toby Dunne’s body in the woods, but unbeknownst to them, they buried something else with him. And there are people who want that something else bad enough to kill for it.
This was such an exciting read! I don’t really remember how No Body No Crime ended up on my TBR, but I’m so glad it did. This is a wild, tightly paced thriller that I absolutely ate up and couldn’t put down for the last two-thirds. The characters were well written, the twists and reveals kept me wanting more, and the villains were actually one of my favourite parts of the whole thing. It also made me laugh out loud a few times.
The book jumps around in time, beginning just forty minutes after a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness, but skipping back to a week before it, or even further to eight years ago during Chloe’s sixteenth birthday party. There are also a few chapters from the POV of one of the bad guys, who are all named Richard, and these chapters I thought were some of the most entertaining. The time jumps gave context for everything going on in the present timeline, and I love to read the lead-up to why somebody got killed instead of being left in the dark about it.
The main relationship of the story between Mel and Chloe is complex. For starters, they killed a guy together. They also live in a rural area where being queer isn’t readily accepted, so they had to keep their love for each other a secret even before they could be implicated together in a crime. Then Chloe ran away without telling anyone where she went, leaving Mel behind to wonder what happened to the love of her life. So when they reunite, it’s messy, especially since they are actively being hunted down by three powerful men named Richard (also known as the Bag of Dicks), and their patriarch Big Daddy. That’s actually his name, and don’t worry, the characters make fun of that name too.
I think it’s funny that the key reason the Bag of Dicks didn’t know that Mel was the accomplice was because the two of them were so careful about being closeted that nobody even knew they were friends. Obviously it sucks that they had to hide their relationship, but when you’re a suspect in the death of a guy connected to some very powerful people, it’s not the worst thing in the world.
You weren’t friends, you two. I would’ve known. I did research on all of Harper’s little girl friends.”
“That’s because we weren’t girl friends, Rick, we were girlfriends.”
“I’ve got an aunt like that,” Vinny says.
“I’m sure she’s lovely,” Mel says.
The pacing generally worked well, though it was a bit slow in the first quarter of the book due to some flashback chapters and setup. However, it quickly picks up after that, and I found myself totally engrossed in the drama and action and I read most of it in one sitting. The writing felt a little bit juvenile for a book targeted at adults, but it wasn’t totally distracting, and the fact that it wasn’t super gritty (in terms of prose) was okay. So if you’re looking for a exciting read with some killer gays that will keep you on the edge of your seat, No Body No Crime is for you!
