Only sparse details have been released (so far) about the reboot of Veronica Mars that is coming to Hulu. We know it will be released July 26th, but we haven’t been told much more and the anticipation is building fast! Let me stop here and confess, I was not an original Marshmallow. It wasn’t until years after the show had ended that I found it on Amazon one day. I was hooked immediately and binge-watched every single episode.
While we wait for the much-anticipated limited series to make its appearance, here are a few great books that just might help you deal with the small, blond, detective-shaped void that we all have.
If you miss the camaraderie of Veronica and Wallace back at Neptune High, try Brittany Cavallaro’s series, A Study in Charlotte. This charming series (which can be read as stand-alone’s, as well) imagines the great-great-great grandson of Dr. Watson attends a private school in Connecticut with the great-great-great granddaughter of Sherlock Holmes.
Charlotte Holmes is treated by her classmates very similarly to how Veronica was treated as the series opened, but bonds with Jaime Watson when he is treated much the same way Wallace was originally.
Fans of Sherlock Holmes will recognise various elements from his famous exploits. In the universe Cavallaro has created, the characters were all real, the adventures really happened, Dr. Watson wrote them all own, and Arthur Conan Doyle was their literary agent.
If you miss the chance to sit and solve a great, old-fashioned, Agatha Christie-style mystery, try Shari Lapena’s An Unwanted Guest. More of a traditional “who-done-it” than a thriller, this mystery sees several guests at a secluded Inn in the Catskill Mountains. The weather turns nasty, isolating them all further as the electricity goes out and outside communication is cut off. One of the guests turns up dead in what could be an accident. But then a second guest dies.
It is easy to picture an episode where Veronica happens to be one of the guests and is the one to start snooping around to solve the mystery.
If you miss the drama involved in working with family AND trying to solve a mystery, try The Undertaker’s Daughter (also published as The Daughter) by Sara Blaedel. In this novel, Ilka Jensen, a school portrait photographer in Copenhagen who works with her mother, is suddenly summoned to Racine, Wisconsin with news that her father has died and left her his funeral home. As her father had left the family decades earlier, Ilka is desperate to find whatever answers she can about this parent she knows so little about. Hoping to go to Wisconsin, wrap up his affairs, get some answers, and return home, Ilka instead stumbles into a local mystery involving murder.
The parents are switched, but there are definite similarities to Veronica’s search for information and details about her mother and Ilka’s need for answers about her father and his secrets. We also get the interplay of working with family, but seeking independence, and how it feels to be pulled in two different directions with loyalty to two very separate parents.
If you miss Veronica’s costume and wig changes, under cover work, and near-misses, try Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart. The “hero” of this book (and boy is it a stretch to call her that) has almost nothing in common with Veronica, except for the ability to think on their toes. With very different motivations for doing so, they each have the gift of coming up with a story, explanation, or scheme on the spot. They both can keep their cool when things start to go bad, and somehow squeak out safely. This character might be who Veronica would have been in a universe without the amazing fatherly love and guidance of Keith.
If you miss the unpredictable dynamics between Veronica and Logan, try Trouble Is A Friend of Mine by Stephanie Tromly. It doesn’t happen right away, but as you get into this story, you almost can’t help but feel the Veronica/Logan vibe with the interaction of Zoe and Digby. He is rude and annoying, but brilliant, and maybe attractive. No matter what he gets involved in, or what story he tells her, she doesn’t know why, but Zoe just can’t say no.
If what you are really missing is everything about the series, then you are in luck as Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham have written two Veronica Mars novels that will immerse you right back into Neptune, California. The Thousand Dollar Tan Line (which the new series will “very loosely” be based on, according to Rob Thomas’s own twitter comments) and Mr. Kiss and Tell both give us the town, the characters, and the stories that we have all been missing!
