Genre: Mystery
Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9780425275917
Berkley Publishing
304 Pages
$7.99; $2.99 Amazon
December 1, 2015
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After losing her newspaper job in Austin and having her former fiancé unfriend her on Facebook, Josie Callahan scoops up her Chihuahua, Lenny, and slinks back to Broken Boot, Texas. Maybe working as head waitress at Milagro - her aunt and uncle's Tex-Mex restaurant - isn't exactly living the dream, but it is a fresh start.
And business is booming as tourists pour into Broken Boot for its famous Wild West Festival. But when a local jewelry designer is found strangled outside Milagro after a tamale-making party, Josie's reporter instincts kick in. As suspects pile up and alibis crack faster than taco shells, Josie needs to wrap up this case tighter than her tia's tortillas - before another victim calls for the check...
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Josie Callahan works as a waitress at her aunt and uncle's restaurant in Broken Boot, Texas. After a disastrous meeting between committee members for the town's festival, one of the attendees, Dixie, is found dead outside the restaurant. Without any other suspects, the police arrest a young man who works at the restaurant and charge him with murder. Josie and her family knows he didn't do it, but the police aren't so sure, and Josie decides to try and find out who the killer is before he's wrongly convicted...
You know how some books grab you from the beginning? This one didn't. It started slow and I was hoping that it would grab me at some point, but even the sniping between committee members didn't do it. I actually began to wonder why they were all on the same committee if they didn't get along. Someone must have known, but obviously they didn't...
But what really lost me is the fact that Josie's little dog is [almost] kidnapped and left outside their restaurant, tied to a post, with his fur shaved off one side and the words "Man's Dead Friend" written in lipstick. Do the police think this is a clue? No. They have Anthony, the murderer! Does it matter that he had no motive? No. Do they even think of looking at the lipstick and trying to find out who uses this shade? No. Instead, they tell her it is just a 'prank' pulled on her by a kid. Yeah, sure. Kids steal peoples' dogs every day, shave their fur and write threatening messages, because, you know, it's just a prank and they can't get in trouble for it. Threatening messages are never going to be taken seriously, at least by any officer in this town, anyway. For me, the book at that point became unbelievable. Any officer who doesn't take any lead seriously doesn't need to be working as one. Unfortunately, the lipstick could have been a huge clue - as I would think women in small towns make a point of not wearing the same color as other women - but the police 'have their man,' so what do they care? Can anyone take the book seriously after this? I certainly can't.
We're also "teased" throughout the book with the promise of a love triangle (insert groan here). As I've stated (over and over again) I abhor them, and here comes another author who just can't stand the thought that her protagonist might be interested in only one man. Again, if this were a man, and he was stringing along two women, the reactions would be completely different. Why authors do this is completely beyond me, but it doesn't add anything to the book to have two men chasing one woman throughout the series. It's not fun reading at any stretch.
Anyway, as I stated above, when the police ignore what can turn out to be a major clue, and don't even have another one as to who the real murderer is, well, it makes it hard to find the book as barely entertaining. Since this is the first in the series, I will read another in this series as I hope it will improve.
https://www.amazon.com/Today-Tamale-Taste-Texas-Mystery/dp/0425275914/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2381050632
More on Rebecca Adler's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/a/rebecca-adler/
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