Reviewed By Liz

ISBN 0-7582-1224-0

I am a sucker for trade shows. When people involved in any industry or business gather to discuss their products and work you can learn the most interesting things. In Perish by Pedicure, a murder takes place during a beauty show in which salon owner Marla Shore is participating and Cohen gives us a glimpse behind the big hair of the professional beauty world that is both enlightening and entertaining.

Heroine Marla Shore has agreed to help out at a beauty industry trade show in nearby Fort Lauderdale in exchange for some publicity for her own salon. She is desperately trying to juggle her show responsibilities, her salon commitments, her renewed friendship with an old college roommate, and her widowed fiancé’s former in-laws, who are now staying with her and whom she seems unable to please. And then there is a murder. Marla’s college roommate (also a houseguest) appears to have been the last person to see the victim alive and is the number one suspect.

While your first inclination might be to dismiss a book with the word pedicure in the title, Cohen has created a good book and series. The setting is interesting, the plot is good and well thought out, and Marla Shore is a character with depth. We learn more about her in this book as her hostile houseguests question her ability to be a good step-mother to their granddaughter due to her involvement with criminals, her professional life, and her Jewish religion and its possible impact on the child’s Christian upbringing. This book has some real meat mixed in amongst the lighter moments.

Favorite character? Goat, Marla’s neighbor. Did I guess it? No. Will I read another? Yes.

Mystery Book Reviews by Liz at http://reviewedbyliz.com ©2007

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ISBN 0-312-34942-4

Evanly Bodies is set in a small town in Wales, where Detective Constable Evan Evans and his new wife Bronwen live in a small and somewhat eccentric house. Change comes to their little town when a Pakistani family moves in and reopens the defunct grocery store. While the townspeople are glad of a place to shop locally, a few culture clashes ensue. And while Bronwen finds herself embroiled in the issues with the new residents, Evan is trying to solve a series of seemingly related, unusual murders.

Three men, who are apparently unknown to each other, are shot on different days by the same weapon while eating in their homes, all seated by a window. Evans must solve these improbable crimes while dealing with a new boss and a position on a special, centralized crime squad – a position which might be either a reward or a punishment, depending upon interpretation.

I found this book particularly interesting because of the contrasts in it. The quaint Welsh village is a backdrop for the heinous acts people commit against each other and serves to highlight some of the harsh truths of our modern world. And just when you think you have the situations and characters sussed out, Bowen slips in some surprises that both keep you on your toes and are ultimately rewarding.

The settings in the book are good and well described, as are the characters. The townspeople, in particular, are a hoot. The plot is reminiscent of old locked room mysteries and, true to that genre, Bowen tries out some sleight of hand to keep the reader from asking the right questions.

Favorite character? Evan Evans, who sees his duties through to the end, no matter how they end up. Did I guess it? Most of it. Will I read another? Yes.

Mystery Book Reviews by Liz at http://reviewedbyliz.com ©2007

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ISBN 156723013X

“Bowels by name and bowels by nature,” said Magersfontein Lugg, valet, butler, and general factotum to Mr. Albert Campion. Lugg, a former burglar who reformed after he “lost his figure,” was reading an appeal from his brother-in-law, Joseph Bowels, an undertaker in the quaint neighborhood of London’s Apron Street.

Mr. Campion, the protagonist in Allingham’s mystery series, has another mission. He’s been asked by senior police officials to lend a hand to young Charlie Luke, the Detective Inspector for the area. It seems there are dark doings in Apron Street, with poison pen letters and perhaps actual poisonings… centering around the Palinode family.

The Palinodes, who live in impoverished splendor in an Apron Street mansion, are a strange bunch. “queer brainy people, all boarding privately in what was once their own home. They’re not easy people to get at from a police point of view, and now there’s a poisoner loose among ‘em.” Evadne, the oldest sister is a grande dame on a meagre budget. Her brother Lawrence speaks in crossword puzzle clues, and Jessica, the poorest of them, follows the dictates of Herbert Boon, whose book illustrates how to live on “one and six.” Ruth, recently deceased, may well have been poisoned because of her predilection for playing the horses, and there are even suspicions about the death of Edward Bon Chretin Palinode, the oldest of the family.

Lugg is dispatched to stay at the Bowels establishment, while Campion moves into the Palinode residence. Between them, they begin to make sense of the strange events in Apron Street.

Of all the classic British mystery authors, Margery Allingham is by far my favorite, and More Work for the Undertaker is a book I try to re-read every few years. The characters are strange and delightful, the dialogue witty and intelligent. Written in 1949, this lovely story still entertains today.

Mystery Book Reviews by DW at http://reviewedbyliz.com ©2007

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ISBN 0-312-35143-7

Seldom have I read a book as unwelcoming to readers as The Letter Killeth. The book is set at the University of Notre Dame and building, locations, school traditions, local organizations, etc., are mentioned but never explained or described in detail. One of the main characters is a professor in the Department of Catholic Studies and numerous authors and their works, as well as many Catholic historical figures, are mentioned fleetingly but, again, never described in detail. But worse than this is the lack of back story for all of the characters – including the main ones. We are introduced to the characters as if this was a chapter in a book and not a stand alone novel. This is the first McInerny book I have read and I know almost nothing about the characters even after reading the book!

The entire book reads like an in joke – but if you are on the outside, you don’t really get it. Here’s one I did get from page 22 after Bill Fenster introduces himself to his professor:

“…When he first heard Bill’s name, he had said, “Ah, window.”
“Just don’t defenestrate me.”
“I’ll spare you the pane.”
Mary Alice hadn’t followed that, but Bill explained it to her later. “I’m surprised he didn’t comment on your name.”

For those of you who didn’t follow this exchange, it is a play on the name Fenster and the word defenestrate, which means to throw someone out a window. And yes, that is the sum total of the joke and explanation – if you didn’t get it you are just out of luck. And the whole book is like that. If you are a well-read Catholic or went to Notre Dame, you might like this book. If not, don’t even consider it.

Favorite character? Lucy Goessen – we get four pages of description of her 20 pages from the end of the book, so I feel I know her best. Did I guess it? No. Will I read another? No. I would rather be defenestrated.

Mystery Book Reviews by Liz at http://reviewedbyliz.com ©2007

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ISBN 1-59058-056-7

Artifacts is one of those books that isn’t written, it is crafted. It is Evans’ first book and it is packed with descriptive detail, multiple plot lines, and interesting characters with lots of back story. This book is a page-turner as the reader gets sucked into Faye Longchamp’s struggle to save her historic home, solve the murders of two co-workers, solve the mystery of the disappearing skeleton and… but I don’t want to ruin it for you.

Faye is a fascinating character. She has a background in archaeology and knows that the illegal artifact hunting she is doing to generate cash and keep her historic home in the family is wrong, but she is desperate. She is without family and doesn’t have much of a support group or a safety net, but she has a goal and she is determined. Evans has given us so much detail about Faye and her situation that the reader has a great deal of empathy for her and her plight. As events unfold, Faye has to make some hard decisions. Evans clearly plotted this book carefully and keeps Faye’s choices true to her character - she doesn’t take the easy way out and leads the reader down paths that are sometimes unexpected but feel right.

This book is a delight to read. It is a wonderful blend of the past and present and, along the way, you learn a little bit about archaeology, flint-knapping, historic homes, slavery, and the illegal trade in artifacts. This is the kind of book you recommend to everyone you know – and anxiously await the author’s next book.

Favorite character? That is a hard one. Joe, Liz, and Magda are all friends of Faye, are great characters, and are all given great moments in which to shine. I think it has to be a three-way tie. Did I guess it? Yes – but that didn’t detract from the book one bit. Will I read another? Just as soon as it comes out!

Mystery Book Reviews by Liz at http://reviewedbyliz.com ©2007

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ISBN 0-312-35419-3

I am going to start by saying that I am not a believer in angels. The recent angel fad has passed my by and I do tend to roll my eyes a bit at the more enthusiastic angel believers. However, I am not a big believer in vampires and really roll my eyes a lot at those people who have fangs grafted onto their teeth - but I can and do still enjoy books with vampires as characters. So I was prepared to be open-minded when reading a book with an angel as a character.

The Angel and the Jabberwocky Murders appears to be the sixth book featuring the guardian angel Augusta Goodnight. Augusta is attached to the human Lucy Nan Pilgrim and is visible to her and a select group of people. Much of Augusta’s time is spent waiting for Lucy to get into trouble and she occupies her down time with cooking and cleaning. Let me just state right now that any angels attached to me are welcome to make themselves known immediately because I am a little peckish and the dirty laundry is piling up. But Augusta also likes to poke her invisible nose into mysteries.

Augusta and Lucy Nan become involved in a series of murders at the local women’s college. The murders are linked by letters with lines from the poem Jabberwocky, which the victims received before their deaths. Augusta and Lucy Nan try to solve the crimes and keep any more of young women from being murdered.

This book is good, but there were several omissions that annoyed me and interfered with my enjoyment of it. The first was that there wasn’t enough information about Augusta. When an author uses a non-human character, they need to define the rules of their existence. An example of this is that most people can’t see Augusta, but some can. Why this is so is not explained. We also don’t know what she is capable of doing when Lucy Nan or her friends get into trouble. While some of this is probably explained in earlier books, the author needs to realize that readers will come to her books mid-series and she needs to repeat some of this information for their benefit.

The second omission was of the complete text of the poem Jabberwocky. When they find the clue from the poem, the characters go look up the text of the poem to refresh their memories of it – but they don’t include it in the book! I read this book on vacation and couldn’t access a copy of it, which annoyed me greatly. And yes, the reader will be much closer to the solution if they have a copy of the whole poem.

Favorite character? Augusta, the cooking and cleaning angel. Did I guess it? No. Will I read another? Yes, but these won’t be on the top of my list.

Mystery Book Reviews by Liz at http://reviewedbyliz.com ©2007

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ISBN 0-451-22000-5

Murder and Salutations is billed as a card-making mystery, and is set in a small town in Virginia. Jennifer Shane is the main character and she has a newly opened card-making store. When there is a murder at the Chamber of Commerce banquet, Jennifer gets involved to try to protect her sister’s reputation – the woman murdered is known to be having an affair with the sister’s husband.

I didn’t like this book much for several reasons and I am going out on a limb and guess the reason why. According to the book, Elizabeth Bright is the pseudonym of a nationally best-selling mystery author. While there are several good reasons for an author to use a pseudonym, there are several bad ones, too. One of which is that they are writing too many books, and I suspect that this is the case with Murder and Salutations. Yes, an author can churn out six books each year, publish them under pseudonyms, and increase their income for that year. But what you often get are six books of poor quality instead of one or two good ones.

There are several indications that this is what the author is doing in the quality of the writing in this book. First, there is a lot of dialogue in this book and it is very repetitive. It takes up a lot of space to have characters talk about what they are going to do, confirm that plan, explain that plan, change that plan, etc. It is filler, it is awkward, and it is much faster to write than good character development or luscious descriptions of scenery. You also see poorly thought out dialogue like this lovely quote from page 73 regarding the murder:

“I understand a shop woman did it. Seems her husband was stepping out on her with the victim. They were having some tawdry affair. These commoners have no more morality than alley cats.”

Now who in modern day Virginia refers to people as “commoners?” I don’t recall there being much royalty down South.

This book also has characters and plot lines that aren’t thought out and go nowhere. The prat who blithers the quote above appears for approximately three pages and serves only to achieve a desired plot twist. There is another character in the book who becomes a suspect because of his violent behavior towards the main character – but we have absolutely no clue why he has taken such an intense dislike to her and it is never explained.

And to top it off, the vital clue to the solution of the murder is presented with so little finesse that it might as well have been lit with neon. It frustrates me that this book is so poorly written. I hope the author is not sullying all of their books this way.

Favorite character? None. Did I guess it? Yes. Will I read another? No. And if you know the author’s other pseudonyms, let me know so I can scratch them off my list, too.

Mystery Book Reviews by Liz at http://reviewedbyliz.com ©2007

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ISBN 1-59058-337-X

Every once in a while I find myself reading a book that is very unlike the light mysteries that I usually devote my time to. Sometimes they are great, sometimes horrible. But at the end of the book, I find myself questioning where this particular book came from. I know my husband slips some of them into my reading pile (and this one may have gotten in that way), but some also get there because of a review or comment about a book that didn’t really reflect the true nature of the book. I suspect the latter in the case of Do Re Mi.

Do Re Mi is an interesting book, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t a very light mystery. It is set in Northern California in 1972, among hippie communes, folk music concerts, biker gangs, crooked cops, and marijuana crops. Recent college graduate Clifford Hickey arrives on the scene to play at a folk music jamboree with his brother, Alvaro. But as soon as the two meet up, local lawmen come to arrest Alvaro for the murder of a police officer’s nephew. Alvaro runs and the police pursue him throughout the book. Certain his brother didn’t kill the teenager, Hickey tries to unravel the troubles of this small town that has turned into a war zone with armed factions trying to control the marijuana crop.

The title of the book is taken from Woody Guthrie’s song about California and the high expectations and disappointment of people heading there during the dust bowl, and there are some interesting tidbits about folk music in the book. But the title is well-chosen because the book is pretty dark - a lot of it reflects the disillusionment of the American people that occurred during the late 60’s and early 70’s. It is also violent and it isn’t a book that is going to leave you skipping and whistling merrily when you finish it. But the book is well written, the characters are very interesting, and the situation complex and probably realistic. If you enjoy reading material with some real meat to it once and a while, you might try this one.

Favorite character? Pop Hickey – a complicated man. Did I guess it? No. Will I read another? I will look to see if Kuhlken has other mysteries that are more to my taste – he’s good, but this is heavier than I usually like.

Mystery Book Reviews by Liz at http://reviewedbyliz.com ©2007

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ISBN 1416523790
When I was living in San Francisco, I discovered how much fun it was to read a story set someplace I had been. At the time, my husband and I were living in a tiny apartment about four blocks from the tiny apartment in which Dashiell Hammett had lived and written about fifty years before. He incorporated many of the streets we walked every day into his stories and it was great to match up the real locations and buildings to the fictional works.

G’Day to Die reminded me of this because it is set in parts of Australia I have visited. In fact, I can state that Port Campbell, where the murder occurs, is the perfect spot for it. It is a beautiful, majestic, and inherently dangerous spot. For those of you who haven’t visited Australia, don’t be put off by the sometimes negative comments in this book – it is a wonderful place. For those of you who have been there, you will probably enjoy reliving a little of your trip with this book.

G’Day to Die is a Passport to Peril travel mystery featuring Emily Andrew. She is a younger woman who escorts a group of seniors from Iowa (including her grandmother) on trips around the world, and this time they are in Australia. Also on this trip are two men who are trying to win Emily and afraid to let the other be alone with her. The style of these books is fun and a little tongue-in-cheek. The antics of the seniors and suitors are amusing and the plot, while far-fetched, isn’t bad. We have a nice group of suspects to choose from and the settings are wonderful. Cozy readers and armchair travelers will enjoy this fast and enjoyable read.

Favorite character? The seniors, particularly when they act as a group, are very amusing. Did I guess it? No. Will I read another? Yes. This is at least the second I have read from this series and I will read more.

Mystery Book Reviews by Liz at http://reviewedbyliz.com ©2007

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ISBN 0553254642

Midnight: in a dark pasture the champion bull, Hickory Caesar Grindon tosses Clyde Osgood’s bloody and mangled corpse with his horns. Was Osgood gored by the bull or dispatched by human hands? Only Nero Wolfe, the fat, orchid-loving detective can disentangle the twisted threads of the mystery.

For those of us who found our way to the mystery genre from young adult stories of The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series may have been our introduction to a fascinating world of adult detective stories. Stout, the author of over 70 works published from 1934 to 1985, won the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1959.

Today, with a plethora of cat mysteries, cooking mysteries, and God knows what else, the Nero Wolfe stories are often overlooked by those who began reading mysteries in the 1980’s or 1990’s. But they wear well… with erudite yet snappy dialogue, provided by his assistant, Archie Goodwin.

Not all classic mysteries are British (though indeed many great ones are) … the American genre can hold its own, with hundreds of fine stories which deserve to be revisited from time to time. And while it’s always exciting to discover a great new mystery, there is much to appreciate in the old ones.

If you’ve overlooked Rex Stout, but wish to make a new acquaintance, or renew an old one, this early mystery is a good place to start. Granted, the Nero Wolfe stories contain no profanity or illicit sex, but then, those were simpler times. Some Buried Caesar is a good read, and well worth your time.

Link: Bibliography for Rex stout

Mystery Book Reviews by Liz at http://reviewedbyliz.com ©2007

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