Feathered Quill Book Reviews

 #Bookreview of Behaving Badly: A Tess Hammond Novel

By: Rochelle Staab

Publisher: Garfield & Lloyd

Publication Date: April 30, 2026

ISBN: 979-8-9956763-0-0

Reviewed by: Lily Andrews

Review Date: October 2, 2026

In Behaving Badly: A Tess Hammond Novel by Rochelle Staab, Tess Hammond, a crime journalist for the Los Angeles Examiner, rushes to the King Edward Hotel following a call about shootouts in the hotel's tunnels. To her shock, she finds her detective husband Johnny lying on the floor, shot. He and his partner have been gunned down by an unidentified informant. Johnny dies, but his partner survives.

As soon as the funeral ends, Tess goes back to work. She can't afford to survive without working now that Johnny's salary is gone. At first, she is asked to cover preparations for the 1932 Summer Olympics happening in August. But later on, she is asked to investigate the disappearance of Merilee Lockwood, the teenage daughter of a prominent banker. This, she hopes, will be her ticket back to the front page, proving she hasn’t lost her edge.

The investigation happens when the depression is at its worst. Families are struggling. Banks are failing. People are standing in bread lines. The Dust Bowl is beginning to displace farmers in the Midwest. But nothing will stop Tess: not the corrupt cops, not the men who tell her to sit down, not the prohibition, and certainly, not the empty pillow beside hers.

Tess has spent years covering the crime beat. She knows what violence looks like. She knows what the mob is like. But nothing has prepared her for what she's about to uncover, precisely as she tracks the missing girl to a no-tell speakeasy: "A twenty-four-hour cop-and-gangster haunt with bootleg booze and live jazz." She discovers from her husband's red notebook that this is the same place where Johnny was meeting someone called Willie Wilke. It is also the same place he took his last breath. The girl disappeared a night before he died. The timing is too close. Tess cannot ignore this. She marches forward to connect the dots. But the truth might be something she never wanted to know.

The best mysteries do not hide the truth, rather they place it in plain sight. This book does the latter. It plants clues, but misdirects the reader from them by having the protagonist trust the wrong people. Consequently, the reader trusts them too. This technique is classical. It is taught in every writing program. But most authors use secrets, lies, or red herrings to distract the reader. Staab uses grief. Grief is the book's atmosphere and the lens through which everything is seen. It bypasses the intellect, going directly into the heart. Grief blinds the reader. But it's what makes the story haunting.

Readers will appreciate Staab's creation of several villains. Each one of them is a product of their own circumstances, but they all come together under the web of the same evil. They are not strangers to the protagonist or the reader. The reader has to pay attention to understand them, lest they find themselves accepting the surface. In doing so, they are given the experience of discovering that evil is not a stranger, but a network of the unexpected and the seemingly trustworthy.

Quill says: Every part of Behaving Badly: A Tess Hammond Novel--the dialogue, the pacing, the clues, the twists, and the mystery--will pique your curiosity, keep you guessing, and reward you for paying attention. This is a fancy way of saying that you will be unable to put this story down, you will forget to eat, you will cancel your plans, and then you will, in the best way, blame it all on Staab. It's well-written, flawless, and it deserves a place on your shelf and in your hands.

For more information about Behaving Badly: A Tess Hammond Novel, please visit the author's website at: rochellestaab.com/