FMAM MOSTLY MYSTERY REVIEWS
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November 2008
A Well Kept Family Secret
by Marja McGraw
Wings ePress Publishing
$16.95, 319 pages
ISBN: 978-1-59705-746-2
Sandi Webster is a PI in Los Angeles, California. She and her partner Pete are getting their business and their romance off the ground. And then Sandi’s mother calls wanting to hire her. She wants Sandi to prove that great great great grandfather did not kill that woman that had been found murdered in his kitchen and in the process find his hidden gold. Yes, he supposedly hid a fortune in gold a century previously.
Livvie, Sandi’s mother comes to visit. One minute she’s loving and sweet and the next she is a raving lunatic. She is in menopause. Sandi doesn’t know where to begin in the search for the true murderer. Stanley, a computer whiz and a client from a previous case happens to drop by having had a wonderful time with his case and offers to help.
While having lunch the group openly discusses the treasure drawing attention to themselves and thereby drawing a tail and someone who wants that treasure. SO not only do Pete and Sandi need to continue work on their regular cases, Sandi needs to figure a way to solve a 100 year case, they have to avoid treasure hunter, and Livvi is a raving lunatic several times a day!
Can Sandi solve who killed the woman on her great great great grandfather’s floor? Is there really a treasure? Who are those guys following Sandi? Will Livvi take the hormones? Should Stanley work for Sandi and Pete?
A WELL KEPT FAMILY SECRET is fun, cozy read. The constant back-n-forth of Livvie being nice being not nice was a bit over the top for me, I clearly got that she was menopausal; I did not need it as a constant reminder.
Throughout the book there is a spattering of Los Angeles history which is quite interesting. Learning a little about the old red light district is fascinating. It makes a history lesson cool and more than just history it makes it mystery.
I enjoyed the book, but the characters were not ones that I felt invested in. The storyline was clever but a tad but predictable. However, that did not take away from the enjoyable Marja McGaw tells it. For a fast paced, quick escape, this is a good choice.
On a scale of 1 to 5, I give A WELL KEPT FAMILY SECRET a 4.
Death Will Get You Sober
by Elizabeth Zelvin
St. Martin’s Minotaur Hardcover
April 2008, $23.95, 272 pages
ISBN – 978-0312375898
Bruce Kohler has had a drinking problem for most of his adult life. He’s a drunk in and out of rehab. This Christmas Eve he wakes up in the Bowery Rehab Center. He makes friends with God, Godfrey, who like him is not a homeless bum, rather just a drunk. God, is clearly from wealth, but alcohol knows not financial strata or social strata. As Bruce is going through rehab he stumbles on a body in the laundry room. He assumes that the body just keeled over because he had cancer. God goes out for a pass on New Year’s Eve, and he barely returns to die in front of Bruce at the rehab center.
Bruce leaves the rehab and joins his friends, Jimmy a friend of Bill W, and his wife a nurse who works hard to keep her husband clean and sober. Feeling that their friend Bruce could make it this time, they agree to help him. Bruce feels that God’s death is not what it seems to be. Jimmy humor’s Bruce, but Barbara thinks that Bruce might be on to something. Barbara signs up to work some overnight shifts at the Bowery so she can snoop. In the meantime, they investigate God’s sisters and their families. And more rehabbers die.
What is going on? Three different rehab units have had multiple deaths in weeks. Are they connected? Was God murdered? What is going with his family?
The story for DEATH WILL GET YOU SOBER is a great idea, clever. However, there is an almost constant dialogue of meetings, and what goes on a meeting, and the constant need for AA meetings. If you take out most of the references to the meetings, this would be a great short story. This book is overdone with the references to meetings, etc. Yes, it is important, and the need for rehab is, but I don't need to read it when I read for pleasure. I thought the idea of someone getting straight and solving a crime would be fun, and it is a degree. But, for me personally, I would have liked to have seen it with much less of the AA interaction and rather have a brief mention of it, and have had more meat of the crimes, and solving of those crimes. The idea is wonderful! And maybe if someone can stay sober enough to read it they will be helped and go to a meeting, but for those of us who want to read for pleasure, it has too much AA information in it.
On a scale of 1 to 5, I give it a 3.7.
Skin Deep
by Jamie Cortland
Crystal Dreams Publishing Paperback, $12.95, 181 pages
ISBN: 978-1591460978
Evelyn Valentino and her daughter Chrissie move to her parents in Arizona to nurse through her very public divorce to the famous Vegas performer Thomas Valentino. While having breakfast she meets James McMann, a local developer. Before long he talks Everlyn into checking out his townhouses. Of course they are more than she can afford but he tells her she can have the largest one for a steal with a lease to buy option. Well, who could pass that deal? So she takes it. In the meantime, another stripper has been found in town with her throat slit.
James sets his sights on Evelyn. He is determined to marry her. On the other hand, Evelyn is still hurt by Thomas’s betrayal. Thomas wants to talk it all with Evelyn even though the divorce is final. James courts Evelyn but her heart isn't in it. At least not until James just happens to leave the latest tabloid out with Thomas and another woman on the cover. When Evelyn sees it she decides that it’s time to move on and gives in to James’s marriage proposal. The whirlwind courtship of four months are nothing compared to putting a wedding together in two weeks.
Then everything changes. James becomes paranoid. He believes that Evelyn and his partner Sal are having an affair. More strippers are murdered. He drinks. He becomes rude and belligerent and then…
You'll have to read SKIN DEEP to find out how bad can go to worse for Evelyn. And it can! SKIN DEEP is a fast read. It is predictable. Evelyn and James are one dimensional. The character reactions are at times unrealistic and at other times, dumb, especially Evelyn. However, that being said, the book is interesting and great for an airplane – it can be read in one sitting.
On a scale of 1 to 5, I give it a 3.8.
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