Final Cut tells a behind the scenes story of a major movie production’s costumer. That is lots of details of how costumer Joey Jessop runs hither and tither to get the right costumes on the cast at the right time and within budget.

Final Cut goes into the the whirlwind of emotions Joey feels after she finds the body of the second Assistant Director and herself a possible suspect. But mostly it’s about Joey’s day job.

The sleuthing is moderate. That’s probably because the most likely suspects are people Joey would rather not talk to on a good day. Asking them “so, did you happen to kill Courtney?” isn’t really on the cards.

Joey does have a coworker that is bad mouthing her, if not full on accusing her of murder. I never understand those characters. Have they never heard of defamation of character law suits? And Joey has a cyberbully that sends her intimidating texts. I don’t understand that either. Why is Joey not blocking that number? Does she want to receive those messages because she is collecting evidence before she goes to the police with them? Neither is mentioned, so every time she gets a new message I wonder why my phone has a block function, but hers doesn’t.

For the most part, the story was okay, though too heavy on the day job not enough on the mystery. The climax was farcical. Joey realises who the killer is and wants to call the police. But first she has to pee. And she puts her phone on her desk while she goes off to the bathroom.

Against better judgement I hoped the story would avoid the cliché that the killer would come between Joey and her phone.

I debated whether to be generous in my rating, but

Spoiler

when a building with a highly flamable stock turned out to not have a sprinkler system

I decided against that.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.