The Reading Bud

Book Details:

Author: Tamar Anolic 
Release Date: 1 March, 2026
Series: The Fayetteville Series (Book 2)
Genre: Crime, Thriller, Mystery
Format: E-book 
Pages: 214 pages
Publisher: –
Blurb:
Chloe Weaver is the oldest daughter in a conservative Christian family of Fayetteville, Arkansas who lives biblically: long skirts for the women, home-schooling for the children, weekly church attendance and old-fashioned courting rules that lead to marriage.
As she turns thirty and remains unmarried, however, Chloe begins to wonder if she’ll ever have the happy marriage and many kids that she has been led to believe constitutes the perfect life. When her parents allow her to court Barnabas Anderson, Chloe knows she should be ecstatic. Instead, she is uncomfortable with the twelve-year age gap between her and Barnabas. Besides, Barnabas has always been a little… weird.

When Barnabas’ brother visits the Weavers, bringing tales of Barnabas’ previous wife and her untimely death, Chloe realizes how little she knows about Barnabas. As she prepares for a prayer assembly in San Francisco, where Barnabas used to live, Chloe decides to investigate his past and his wife’s death. With the help of Detective Logan Cartwright of the San Francisco Police Department, Chloe steps out of her comfort zone to find the truth- and find hope for her future.

The Abnormal Gumshoe is the sequel to the award-winning novel Two Sisters of Fayetteville.

Review

The Abnormal Gumshoe by Tamar Anolic is an unusual and engaging mystery that begins with a woman slowly realising that the life built around her may not be the life she wants. The novel follows Chloe Weaver, the thirty-year-old eldest daughter in a deeply conservative Christian family in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Still unmarried, still living at home, and still carrying much of the household’s invisible labour, Chloe is already questioning her place in the world when her parents approve a courtship with Barnabas Anderson, an older man from their church whose awkwardness has always unsettled her.

What begins as a courtship drama gradually turns into a murder investigation, when Barnabas’s brother reveals that Barnabas had once been married in San Francisco, and that his first wife, Clara, died under circumstances officially ruled a suicide. Chloe’s decision to look into Clara’s death gives the novel its detective spine, but what makes the story compelling is not only the mystery itself, it is the way the investigation becomes Chloe’s first real act of self-direction.

The novel’s strongest element is Chloe’s voice. She is observant, anxious, funny in small flashes, and shaped by religious obedience without being reduced to it. Author Anolic does a good job of showing how Chloe’s world has trained her to second-guess herself. This makes the mystery more emotionally layered than expected, because Chloe is not only investigating Barnabas, she is also investigating the boundaries of her own life. The book does not mock Chloe’s religious background, which I appreciated. Instead, it examines the cost of a system where women are taught to wait, obey, serve, and call that fulfilment.

That said, the novel is not without its rough edges. The pacing is gentler than readers might expect from a mystery, especially in the early chapters where domestic details and internal reflection take up considerable space. Some scenes could have been tightened, and certain investigative developments arrive rather conveniently.

Overall, The Abnormal Gumshoe is a thoughtful, character-led mystery with a distinctive protagonist and a strong emotional core. It is less a hardboiled detective novel and more a story of awakening wrapped around a cold case. Chloe’s transformation from overlooked daughter to determined investigator gives the book its real satisfaction, and by the end, the mystery matters not only because justice is needed for Clara, but because Chloe herself deserves a future chosen by her own hands.

You can also read this review at: