As with the first “Veronica Mars” novel (last year’s “The Thousand Dollar Tan Line”), the follow-up, “Mr. Kiss and Tell” (January, paperback), is a wonderful continuation from the TV show and movie. With Rob Thomas writing (along with Jennifer Graham), it’s no surprise that I can easily picture Kristen Bell saying Veronica’s lines, and that the mystery plot is intelligent and twisty.
The most refreshing aspect of “Mr. Kiss and Tell” is that it brings one of the hot-button issues of recent years to the fore: Civil rights abuses by police departments. This issue was in the news in 2014 due to a civilian shooting death in Ferguson, Mo., a choking death in New York City, and a beating death in Los Angeles, among other cases.
I have no doubt that these cases were on the minds of Thomas and Graham when they penned this latest chapter in the saga of Sheriff Dan Lamb, who was introduced in the 2014 movie as an even more corrupt follow-up to his predecessor and brother, Don (from the TV series). “Mr. Kiss and Tell” follows up on a thread from the movie where Weevil is knocked out and has a gun planted on him after he tries to help a wealthy citizen.
Cliff and Keith work not only to clear Weevil, but also to show a pattern of evidence-planting in the Balboa County Sheriff’s Department. I love that the novel – rather than being a doom-and-gloom slice of modern reality – presents a possible solution: Cliff and Keith bring a lawsuit against the department, and – in a perfect storm – another candidate enters the election against Lamb. The new candidate isn’t guaranteed to be perfect – and perhaps future stories will explore this – but Veronica and Keith wisely note that she can’t be any worse than Lamb.
That’s just the B-plot. The A-plot finds Veronica investigating a rape of a 19-year-old character last seen as a 9-year-old in one episode of the TV series. As we also saw in the movie and the first book, Thomas no longer pulls any punches when exploring this dark subject matter. “Mr. Kiss and Tell” has swearing and adult sexual situations. The TV series had to hold back slightly in this regard because it was on a network (nonetheless, the mix of the hardboiled and teen genres gave the show a lot of its charm). But now, the book series – if one imagines the stories transposed onto the screen, which is easy to do – plays like a cable or premium-channel drama.
Unlike most books spun off from TV shows, this series is the official continuation of the “Veronica Mars” saga and features developments in the characters’ lives just as significant as what we saw in the TV series and movie. Veronica learns more about how the military genuinely changed Logan during their decade apart. Not insignificantly, the couple gets a dog – which they adorably name Pony – and the authors wonderfully describe little moments with the mutt (something that would be much harder to do on a TV show – it’s not by random chance that Backup missed so many episodes despite being the Marses’ pet the whole time).
I polished off “Mr. Kiss and Tell” in a couple days partly because it’s a juicy neo-hardboiled mystery and partly because I couldn’t wait to see what would happen next with Veronica and Logan.
My only complaint about the book is the same one I had about “Thousand Dollar Tan Line”: The authors insist that despite the fact that we saw Veronica and her friends graduate in 2006, their 10-year-reunion was in 2014 (and therefore, someone who was 9 in 2006 is 19 in 2014). With everything else about the books ringing true to the characters’ lives and real-world issues, it’s weird that they insist on that one bit of impossible time travel.
It looks like this will mark, if not the end of the “Veronica” saga, then at least a pause in the action. Thomas is focused on his new CW series, “iZombie” (scheduled to debut March 17), and despite the first book ranking as a New York Times Bestseller, a third book isn’t planned, nor is a second movie. Hopefully that will change someday. I have no doubt Thomas has the next chapter in Veronica’s life loosely plotted somewhere in his mind.
More “Veronica Mars” reviews:
“The Thousand Dollar Tan Line” (2014)