Take some Chick Lit, add a touch of fantasy, throw in a mystery, a bit of satire and a tiny hint of romance. You have Maggie Needs An Alibi, a very funny book that looks like the beginning of a series. It’s one I plan to follow. Maggie Kelly was the author of mid-list romances….
I love cats. Okay, actually, I love animals in general, but I especially love my cat. Having never tried a mystery that was “co-authored by a cat” I decided to give Catch as Cat Can a try. The result was that while the mystery was merely okay, the style of the prose was a little…
It’s no secret that I was deeply disappointed in Janet Evanovich’s last book, Seven Up, and I swore up and down that I was not going to read Hard Eight. No way, no sir, no how. Then I got an email asking me to review it, and well, I’m not an idiot who’d pass up…
The Silent Bride, the latest installment in Leslie Glass’s April Woo mystery series, starts off with plenty of action and never lets up, but has an ending that is not quite up to par with the rest of the book. It is, however, plenty entertaining, with good characterizations and, in Detective Sergeant April Woo, a…
“Whatever happened to Marion Chesney?” My sister Anne, who is The Pickiest Reader In The World, but loves Marion Chesney asked me that question a while back. Also, a few weeks ago, several AAR reviewers mentioned Marion Chesney and how much they enjoyed her wonderful light traditional Regency Romances. Marion Chesney is still writing but…
Reading this book so soon after reading the latest J.D. Robb was a bit of a revelation. I still stand by the B grade I gave to that one and the one I’m giving this one, but have to say that Chasing Darkness is worthy of a comparison that in some respects puts Danielle Girard…
Looking for a few hours of lighthearted reading? You can’t do better than this one. Clearly I’ve been missing out, since this is the third book in this author’s series involving Hannah Garvey. The book starts out right where South of Sanity left off, which was somewhat disorienting for me because I had not read…
I’ve been hearing great things about Dennis Lehane for some time now, and I finally bought the first book in his series of mysteries set in Boston. All I can say is, believe the hype. Great writing and a funny yet tortured hero/narrator has me eagerly anticipating the rest of the series. Patrick Kenzie is…
I worked in a mystery bookstore for ten years. I started during a boom time when female authors were writing female protagonists like never before and reveled in that fact. Though I’m not sure why, one author that somehow always remained in the TBR category was Leslie Glass. Glass’s series protagonist is April Woo, a…
Many mysteries have used as their backdrop one of those quaint English villages that seem only to exist on BBCA, PBS, and A&E mini-series. If you are fond of cozy mysteries in quaint villages, you can find one in Sarah Caudwell’s The Sibyl in her Grave London barrister Julia Larwood discovers that her Aunt Regina,…