Christmas Crime: Antiques Flee Market: a Trash 'n' Treasures Mystery by Barbara Allan (Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins)

Following her divorce, Brandy Borne moved back in with her mother, Vivian, in her hometown of Serenity. Much to her chagrin, the first thing they did together was attend a mother-daughter meeting of the local Red Hat Club. (Mystery readers all, the local branch has been named The Red-Hatted League.) Vivian couldn't go with Brandy's much-older sister Peggy Sue (they were both named after popular songs of their day) because Peggy Sue was already a member.

Before her arrival, Peg informed Brandy that Vivian sold off most of her prized possessions to an antique dealer while on a "drug holiday" from her bipolar meds. When the antique dealer was found dead — and both Brandy and Vivian admitted to running over the body in their car — it was up to the Borne girls to sift through the other suspects (the dealer was known for taking advantage of citizens) and find the real killer. This story was told in the first "Trash 'n' Treasures" book, Antiques Roadkill.

Since then, they've become amateur sleuths of a sort, investigating murders in their formerly quiet little Midwestern hometown and generally causing havoc of one sort or another while getting in the way of genuine police investigation. The second book in the series, Antiques Maul, is Halloween-themed. It concerns Brandy's trying to keep Vivian out of trouble by opening a booth at the local antiques mall, then finding a woman dead, presumably by her pit bull.

The third book in the series is Antiques Flee Market. Now it's Christmastime, and a former "conquest" of Vivian's (a "mercy mission" during wartime) has been found dead in his nursing-home bed.

Along for the search this time is the victim's British, Goth granddaughter, Chaz, an ex-con with less than savory friends and a delightfully Cockney way of speaking. Meanwhile, Brandy is troubled by an anonymous note that suggests Vivian is not her real mother, and Vivian is excited by news that she is no longer bipolar but merely schizo-affective (which is actually bipolar with psychotic tendencies).

Antiques Flee Market shows a marked improvement over the first book in the series, which I was actually unable to finish (I skipped the followup). The prose here is smoother, with very little sign of one author taking over for the other. The Collinses work well together as "Barbara Allan," and even the humor — which definitely felt inserted into Antiques Roadkill — is much more seamlessly integrated, making for a genuinely funny read (as opposed to simply a joke-filled one).

Fans of co-author Max Allan Collins will appreciate a couple of touches that must have come from him: namely a Mike Hammer reference and the fact that the antique this time around is a rare edition of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs (the "sleuth" Collins used for his Disaster series book The Pearl Harbor Murders). But all in all, "Barbara Allan" is really coming into her own, and the Trash 'n' Treasures series has to be the quirkiest cozy series on the market.

In fact, in many ways, the Collinses seem to be turning the classic tropes of the cozy subgenre on their ear. After all, the Bornes aren't independently wealthy; their dog is diabetic, blind, and named after raw fish; they're highly dependent on psychiatric medications just for their daily functioning (with disastrously funny results if, for example, they get their pill boxes confused); and their antiques are solely low-rent, flea-market fare (Mother is not averse to Dumpster diving) that clearly falls under the heading of the series' inspiration, the adage "One man's trash is another man's treasure."

In short, unlike most escapist fiction protagonists, the Bornes do not have a life to which it is likely the reader will aspire (except perhaps for those readers who should be, but aren't already, on psych meds). It more closely resembles horror fiction in that the events make you feel better about your own life.

Of course, I could be off on my facts a bit there, given that I wouldn't even have heard of this series if it weren't co-written by one of my favorite authors. But Antiques Flee Market actually turned out to be quite a fun read. Each chapter ends with an (often tongue-in-cheek) antique-buying tip, and the couple have a delightfully wicked sense of humor (dig that soap-opera-derived cliffhanger ending!). I'm already looking forward to reading the fourth book in the series, Antiques Bizarre.

Antiques Disposal: a Trash 'n' Treasures Mystery by Barbara Allan (Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins)

Fans of Storage Wars, take note. Antiques Disposal, the sixth entry in the Trash 'n' Treasures cozy mystery series from author Barbara Allan (actually spouses Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins) has heroines (or anti-heroines, depending on your take) Brandy and Vivian Borne bidding on a storage unit to stock their antique shop. There they discover both a cornet (that may have belonged to Bix Beiderbecke) and a corpse (that definitely belongs to Big Jim Bob, owner of the storage area and ex-flame of Vivian's).

If you're new to the antics of the mother-daughter dueling duo (as well as the authors' prevalent parenthetical asides — apparently the subject of much debate), you may wish to start with the first novel in the series, Antiques Roadkill, though the authors will catch you up satisfactorily in Antiques Disposal. 

Just be aware that facts presumed here were used as revelations in previous entries, so reading a later book may spoil the impact of earlier ones.  (The authors tackle this with admirable wit within the text.)

The Collinses as "Barbara Allan" produce another wacky, lightweight romp perfect for an evening's escapism, despite the Bornes' increasingly complex family tree.  This series is just pure fun, and the humor, though readers of more "hard-boiled" fiction might call it silly, is a treat. 

However breezy the novel feels, writing funny is actually quite difficult to pull off while keeping a tight rein on a murder-mystery plot.  The fact that this pair (the Collinses, not the Bornes) keep managing to pull this off while remaining happily married is a credit to them. 

(For those thinking that the authors are merely cashing in on a popular fad, looking into the history on Max Allan Collins's blog reveals that the first chapter and synopsis of Antiques Disposal were sent to the editor in June 2010, and Storage Wars debuted in December of that year.)

Antiques Bizarre: a Trash 'n' Treasures mystery by Barbara Allan (Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins)

Following her divorce, Brandy Borne moved back in with her mother, Vivian, in her hometown of Serenity. Since then, the Borne girls have become amateur sleuths of a sort, investigating murders in their formerly quiet little Midwestern hometown and generally causing havoc of one sort or another while getting in the way of genuine police investigation. (For a more thorough history, read my review of Antiques Flee Market, the third book in the series.)

Antiques Bizarre is the fourth in this increasingly entertaining series by married collaborators Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins writing under the pseudonym "Barbara Allan." The action picks up a few months after the events of Antiques Flee Market.

Brandy is now three months pregnant with the surrogate child of her best friend Tina (who is unable to bear due to cervical cancer) and experiencing a remarkable bout of morning sickness when she needs to drive Vivian to an appointment with Madam Petrova. Vivian plans to ask Nastasya to donate her Fabergé egg (the last one ever made) to be auctioned at an upcoming charity antiques bazaar with the proceeds going to local flood victims. (As a side of "friendly" competition, the group who raises the most money will be profiled in a regional magazine.)

By the end of the auction, both the owner and the high bidder will be dead, dozens of other poisoned, and the egg missing. But at least Vivian's team will be the ones in the magazine, and isn't that what's really important? In any case, given Brandy's state, she intends to stay away from any of her mother's attempts to solve the murders — though she does hesitate to let her "shrewd Nancy Drew–like detective's mind" lie fallow.

Like the devoted mystery readers they are, they first decide whether to approach the investigation like Agatha Christie or Rex Stout. Vivian eventually gathers all the suspects together like Christie while making surprise pronouncements like Stout, therefore offering the best of both worlds.

Though the authors have chosen the most obvious of motives for their killer — making this the most traditional entry so far in terms of the actual "mystery" — Antiques Bizarre still has a lot going for it. The Collinses work well together as "Barbara Allan." With this, the couple's sixth novel together in total, the division between their individual voices is all but indiscernible. It all comes through in a uniform, shared voice.

The Trash 'n' Treasures books have to be the funniest mystery series going. The humor of Antiques Bizarre comes from Brandy's and Vivian's somewhat skewed points of view. (Brandy's off her Prozac due to being pregnant, and both of them find this an improvement.) This makes for a genuinely funny read, with the authors mining the proceedings for all the humor they can get out of it. The jokes aren't all gems but they come at such a rapid-fire pace that you hardly notice. One could say the Collinses are the Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker of the cozy mystery.

Like the previous books, Antiques Bizarre ends on a soap-opera-inspired cliffhanger that carries the continuing saga of Brandy Borne's parentage into the next book. And each chapter ends with a piece of advice on some aspect of antiquing. "Barbara Allan" has come up with another winner, and I'm already looking forward to their next, currently being written and tentatively titled Antiques Knock-Off.