Time's Up

Time's Up by Janey Mack

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


It’s about damn time someone wrote a book like this: a book about a meter maid who solves crimes. Times Up is the first in what promises to be a series of novels about Maisie McGrane, a Police Academy washout who takes to the streets with a ticket gun in her new job with Chicago Parking Enforcement.

Maisie McGrane comes from a family of cops, all alpha males who are both extremely protective yet merciless in that way that only a sibling can be. So when she flunks out of the Academy because of an issue with being “too thin-skinned to deal with the daily barrage of public hostility and unfriendly situations that a police officer encounters” well, the next logical step is to join Parking Enforcement and try to work her way back to where she wants to be. Her self-image takes a huge hit as she is forced to deal with the daily abuses and indignities that being a meter maid has to offer. But Maisie is no quitter, for all she has ever wanted to be was to be a cop, and she will find a way somehow.

With the help of the mercenary ex-Army Ranger Hank Bannon, Maisie finds herself embroiled in controversy and a murder investigation that reaches to the highest levels of city government. And along the way, she becomes a master of the AutoCite, the parking boot, and she learns the ins and outs of parking violations. While I don’t often find myself rooting for the meter maids, here I made an exception.

Time’s Up is a hoot, a book that moves along well, while making you laugh and maybe making you care just a little about the poor sap who is ticketing your car. If this book is anywhere close to reality, their lives are probably much worse than yours.






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