Stakeouts and Strollers

• Author: Rob Phillips
• Genre: Cozy Mystery
• Publication Date: March 17, 2026
• Publisher: Minotaur Books

Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Amateur private investigator and new dad Charlie Shaw gets more than he bargained for when he agrees to track down a young girl’s missing father in Rob Phillips’ award-winning debut.

Charlie Shaw is low on sleep. And cash. Otherwise, life is going pretty well for the ex-crime reporter: He’s happily married to his college sweetheart, he’s a first-time dad to the most adorable baby girl in existence, and he’s making ends meet as a rookie PI. But when Charlie meets Friday Finley, a frightened sixteen-year-old runaway on a stakeout-gone-wrong, his world gets a little more complicated.

Friday is looking for her estranged father Shawn, an unreliable alcoholic who left when she was young—and who also happens to be her only shot at avoiding the foster care system since her mother’s death a few weeks earlier. At first, Charlie believes the man is simply hiding out somewhere, avoiding his responsibilities as usual, but the more he investigates, the more unsettling—and dangerous—Shawn’s disappearance becomes. When his own family is threatened, Charlie realizes he’s in over his head, but can he back out now that he’s begun to care for Friday as his own?

A perfect blend of humor and high stakes, Stakeouts and Strollers is a heartwarming story of fatherhood, family, and what it really means to be a “Girl Dad.”

It’s no secret that I love a good cozy mystery, and am always game to try a new one. I haven’t come across many cozies written by male authors though, so I was especially excited to check this one out. The protagonist’s life experience as the new father of a girl only made this one that much more appealing to me. And the good news? This book did not let me down.

To start with, Charlie Shaw was a newspaper crime reporter, but when he got furloughed, he decided to take another route and got his license to be a private investigator. He works for Inspector Dwayne Powell, the owner of the firm he works for and an outstanding human being. Powell’s initial charm is that he puts up with Charlie’s bumbling attempts to learn the ropes, but he doesn’t only mentor Charlie with the job, he also moves into a role as both Charlie’s common sense and moral compass throughout the story. He’s exactly the kind of guy you’d want to have your back during a dangerous job.

I liked Charlie’s character immediately, but he continued to grow on me over the course of the novel, and I found that by the end of the story I liked him even more than I had initially. He’s married to a gorgeous woman, Ryan, and they have a baby who is around 9 months old, Callie. They also have a night nurse, Grace, but she seems to do a lot more than just taking care of Callie at night and getting her sleep schedule on track. She helps around the house, makes meals, and has no problem with a fifth person taking up residence in the minuscule (1000 foot) home. Completely unrelated, I have always loved the name Ryan for a girl—I went to sleep away camp with a female Ryan, and one of my good friends has named her daughter Ryan. 

An aspect of Charlie’s character that immediately appealed to me was his humility. He knows he isn’t an experienced or knowledgeable private eye, and he’s under no illusion about his skills or intelligence. He has a fantastic sense of humor, with a lot of it self-deprecating, although he also has an issue that I have—a minimal or completely absent filter between the brain and the mouth, meaning that sometimes we’re just as surprised as others at by what comes out of our mouths. There’s also an element of corny dad jokes, another thing I share with him. The scene where he meets a police chief named Gramble had me cracking up so hard because of his verbal diarrhea mixed with quite a few nostalgic references:

“‘I’m Chief Mike Gramble.’ ‘

Gramble on,’ I said. ‘Sing my song.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. I have a Zeppelin CD.’”

As a new dad, Charlie is slowly learning the ropes while Powell does his best to keep him on simple, low-risk investigations, mostly following spouses who have been suspected of infidelity. But when he crosses paths with a teen girl from Oregon searching for her missing father after the death of her mother, his GirlDad instincts kick in and he can’t resist taking her on as a client to find her dad. Friday Finley becomes not only a case Charlie takes on for free, but part of a found family that takes her in with no questions asked—obviously it is the Shaw family and Grace, but she fits right in. 

My absolute favorite part of the book is the witty, rapid-fire banter that was both humorous and relatable, mostly centered around Charlie, Ryan, and Grace, although Friday, Powell, and the other characters are in on it too. There is a lot of dialogue in the story, and it feels natural, which isn’t always easy to do. 

The writing style is short and snappy, descriptive without leaning into purple prose, and when Phillips depicts scenes or characters, it is easy to visualize them. Mainly because it’s so clear and direct, like this description of a couple of male characters that causes them to pop into my head fully formed:

“The tall guy was nice-looking. The short guy fell off the ugly tree and every branch got their licks in. He had a caveman forehead that sloped like Mount Davidson and a huge flat nose that seemed to cover half his face. His hair was shaved into a buzz cut. His hollow, beady eyes flashed no emotion or discernible intelligence. He wore a black track jacket zipped up only three-fourths of the way, exposing some unsightly chest hair.”

Scenes involving Callie are clearly written by someone who has at least some familiarity with what it is like to be a parent to an infant, although the love and joy that both Charlie and Ryan feel towards Callie is heartwarming. While certain aspects of their parenting style rings true, like a scene where Charlie runs down the battery on his phone watching Callie sleep on a baby monitor app, others don’t feel as realistic, like how easily Charlie is willing to put his family in danger or bringing her onto a stakeout that could be volatile. But I found it hilarious when he made comments that brought some nostalgia to the table, and there were quite a few Gen X references that made me chuckle, like this one to Paul Oakenfold, a titan in the EDM scene in the early aughts:

“My temple pounded like an Oakenfold song.”

The banter between Charlie, Ryan, and the much older Grace is hilarious and realistic, and fast-moving in a snappy way rather than feeling rushed. I enjoyed the fast pace of both the story and the investigations, and although it did take me a while to read this one, it was mostly because I was enjoying it so much and didn’t want to rush through it. Charlie totally rocks the ‘bumbling schlimazel’ role so well. [If you don’t know what a schlimazel is, it’s a Yiddish word meaning someone who is consistently unlucky or likely to get in accidents, which sounds exactly like Charlie.] At times, I was curious about what type of PI training he had received, since he specifically says that he has no idea what he is doing, and I couldn’t figure out how he was just allowed to go on investigations with minimal training and just guidance after the fact from Powell. But at least he isn’t under any delusion that he’s brilliant and a talented PI, instead being more like The Pink Panther’s Inspector Clouseau:

“‘This is my wife, Ryan. She’s a marketing executive. She’s a lot smarter than me. This is my daughter, Callie. She’s a lot smarter than me too.’” 

When it comes to Friday’s role in the story, she’s way more than simply found family, and she plays a big role. Things move swiftly from Charlie’s pro bono work to find her father to realizing there is a lot more occurring under the surface, since her father isn’t exactly the kind of dad anyone hopes for—he’s been mostly absent from her teen years, struggles with substance use issues, and isn’t even close to being called reliable. It felt completely on brand for a 16-year-old to leave town and drive 600 miles to locate her dad without knowing exactly how or where to find him—teenagers struggle with thinking consequentially since that part of the brain doesn’t develop fully until a person hits their early 20s. This makes complete sense to me when I think of some of the dumber ideas I had as a teenager myself, and I’m sure at least a few people reading this knows what I’m talking about. But it’s hard not to empathize with Friday and I found myself wishing everything would work out for her.

Overall, this was a fantastic read, although a lot of the humor was geared towards Gen X or early millennials. This was a positive in my case, since I recognized all of the references, but I could see this being frustrating for younger (or older) readers. Charlie is a really good guy who has some amazing people in his social circle, but he wasn’t as good at separating work and his personal life. One random thought of mine while reading was to wonder if he is a fan of Stephen King, with a bar named Cashel Rock (not a misspelling) and a fictional town of Derryville. There were a few things I noticed while reading that I didn’t love, although ultimately this didn’t have much of an effect on my rating. Firstly, there is a section in the book where it delves all the way into technical jargon about start-ups and venture capitalism that makes things a bit more difficult to understand, but it was a small part of the story, and my lack of understanding didn’t make it difficult to follow the plot or the clues. The other is the juxtaposition of sweet family moments with a pretty serious crime investigation. I also had a hard time believing some of the events, like Charlie turning a stakeout into ‘bring your daughter to work day,’ and I have no idea how Ryan puts up with him, being the only voice of reason in the relationship. Other than that, I really enjoyed this book and hope that this is only the start of a new series and not a standalone novel.

Bottom line: If you like cozy mysteries, sarcastic and witty banter, found family, and a story structure that varies from the norm in the genre, this might just be the book for you!

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