Maizie Albright, 25 has returned home to live with her dad having been ordered by a judge to get and keep a job within ten days or return to a jail sentence in California. The former TV star knows nothing else but how to be a private detective (teen detective, Julia Pinkerton, was the role she played on TV). She has since studied law enforcement and criminal justice and is convinced that is where her future career lies. Unfortunately, there is only one detective agency in town and he’s not looking to hire anyone, especially Maizie.
However, something is in her favour …the detective, Wyatt Nash, might not want to hire her, but his client does …and she is taken on to follow his wife for a week to prove whether or not she’s having an affair. But then Maizie loses track of Sarah, the man’s wife, and suddenly everyone is suspected of killing her. On top of that, Maizie is attracted to Nash and working with him leaves her frequently weak at the knees with her head lost in the clouds.
Returning to Black Pines, Georgia is a complete culture shock for Maizie, but with friends like Tiffany and Rhonda around, she begins to settle in again, all the while avoiding her money-grabbing and manipulative mother, Vicki. Her father, however, is much more grounded, refusing to get her a car when there was a perfectly good dirt bike in the barn that she had as a fourteenth birthday present.
I found the story to be a bit slow to get going, and Maizie spent a lot of time in her head pondering what would Julia do before getting to the bottom of the mystery. The pace seriously picked up towards the end with more twists and turns that seemed possible.
In all, 15 Minutes is a fun story, combining cozy mystery with teen detective, plenty of humour and silly moments … in a nutshell, it’s pure escapism. The narration managed to perfectly deliver the high-pitched girly squealing that sums Maizie up, as well as being easy to follow for all of the other characters.