Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead

The Finlay Donovan Mysteries include five novels and a short story: Finlay Donovan Is Killing It (2021), Finlay Donovan Knocks ’Em Dead (2022), Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun (2023), “Veronica Ruiz Breaks the Bank: A Short Story” (2023), Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice (2024), and Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave (2025). The Finlay Donovan Mysteries are a part of the cozy mystery subgenre of the mystery genre and are focused on the amusing adventures of a mystery writer who unintentionally gets involved in dangerous situations and has to extricate herself while juggling family responsibilities, relationships, and her career. 

The cozy mystery subgenre separates itself from other subgenres like the police procedural or psychological thriller that rely on darker, more graphic portrayals of murder and investigation. Cozy mysteries have a gentler tone, sometimes with a humorous edge, as in the Finlay Donovan Mysteries series. The subgenre was established by Agatha Christie with her Miss Marple series, which includes Murder at the Vicarage (1930) and A Pocketful of Rye (1953). These novels also established many cozy mystery conventions, including an amateur detective, like Finn Donovan, who solves crimes in suburban Virginia while balancing the concerns of her family and her career, helped by her nanny, Vero. Other popular modern cozy mysteries that take a lighthearted approach to the murder mystery genre include Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Dial A for Aunties (2021), Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club (2020), and Benjamin Stevenson’s Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (2022). Although critics of the subgenre argue that the soft-pedaling of murder as something humorous and even fun is inherently immoral, disguising the devastating impact that murder has in the real world, defenders point out that cozy mysteries are actually deeply concerned with the moral world, promoting both empathy and justice.

In Finlay Donovan Is Killing It, the series’ first novel—and the one that immediately precedes Finlay Donovan Knocks ’Em Dead—Finn has recently divorced her cheating husband, Steven, and is struggling to pay her bills with her meager income from writing romantic suspense novels. During a conversation with her literary agent, Finn’s remarks are misunderstood by a nearby woman, Patricia Mickler, who thinks that Finn is a contract killer. Patricia offers Finn $50,000 to kill her husband, Harris. Finn does not intend to kill Patricia’s husband, but, through a series of circumstances, he dies in the back of her van. Finn’s former nanny, Vero, helps her bury the body, and the two agree that Vero should move back into Finn’s home and resume her job as nanny to Finn’s two children. 

Believing that Finn has successfully fulfilled the contract to kill her husband, Patricia refers another unhappy wife to Finn. This time, the wife who wants her husband killed is Irina Borovkov, and her husband, Andrei, has ties to the Russian mafia. As Finn tries to find out who is responsible for Harris’s death and escape from her unwilling involvement with organized crime, her life becomes even more complicated when police detective Nick Anthony asks for her help with a case and the two begin a romantic relationship. Eventually, Finn’s comic misadventures lead to a denouement in which Finn discovers who killed Harris, bodies are discovered on the farm that Steven runs, and powerful mobster Feliks Zhirov is arrested for these murders.