Review: "Crime in the Gym" by Catherine Moloney

Crime in the Gym by Catherine Moloney
Published July 2026 via Joffe Books
★★

The gym's poster boy is dead...and there's less a list of suspects than a muddle of possible candidates. But with Markham and his crew on the job, surely this one is solvable.

Now: I freely admit that I hamstringed myself on this one. This is book 24 in a series that, I presume, follows the same characters; I dove in at book 24 because 1) I am still in my Gym Rat Era 2.0 and willing to be waylaid by a book that might take place in a gym, and 2) it seemed reasonable that there would be some catch-up on who the recurring characters were.

The second point turned out to be true; the recurring characters are reintroduced early on (for series readers who need a reminder or for those of us who fell into the series late in the game). There are also regular reminders throughout the book of what the status is of various relationships, character quirks, etc. Despite this, I had some trouble keeping everyone straight—I suppose if I'd read the previous 23 books I'd be clear about who the detectives were and only need to keep those associated with the murder straight, but as it was they were all new to me, and a lot of the characterization relied on personalities built over many books. (The first point was not so much true; once the detectives have tromped through the gym to interview people, they show no real interest in returning, though they do make an inexplicable visit to a gym where criminals and fuzz rub shoulders before going back to their daily crime-ridden or crime-investigating lives.)

As detectives, I didn't love these characters. They couldn't really decide whether they wanted to be hard-boiled old-school detectives or modern and sensitive ones; they largely split the difference by calling each other (or themselves) out for un-PC thoughts but then sniggering over the thought of older women doing ballet. They do spend a lot of time investigating, but much of that is told through dialogue after the fact—we'll see two characters go to interview someone, have part of the interview...and then cut to the two characters in the car later, discussing the second half of the conversation. Also many instances where they pawn off the dirty (and dangerous) work to civilians, then leap in at the end to clean things up. Maybe intentional choices, but to me odd ones.

Readers who have followed this series throughout will likely be satisfied, though. Relationships set up in other books continue apace. I did not guess whodunnit ahead of time, and whether the detectives are looking at connected crimes or simply coincidental timing is kept up in the air until late in the book.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.