Confessions of a Red Herring (A Red Herring Mystery Book #1)

Author:  Dana Dratch
Genre:   Mystery

Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9781496716569
Kensington Publishing
440 Pages
$7.59; $6.99 Amazon
May 29, 2018

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Alex Vlodnachek has been a reporter for 12 years, a P. R. rep for three months, and a murder suspect for all of 24 hours.  When her agency's double-dealing CEO is stabbed, scheming co-workers cast the new redhead as a compelling red herring.  The story is media catnip - especially her salacious nickname:  Vlod the Impaler.

Even Alex has to admit she looks guilty.

Out of a job and under suspicion, Alex is running low on cash, when she's visited by a second disaster: Soon her tiny bungalow is bursting with her nearest and not-so-dearest.  To keep herself out of jail - and save what's left of her sanity - Alex returns to her reporting roots.  She goes undercover to reclaim her life, break the story, and unmask a murderer.  Pretty much in that order.

What she doesn't know:

The killer also has a to-do list.

And Alex is on it.

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Alex Vlodnachek was a reporter who recently went into P.R. because the CEO offered her a salary she couldn't refuse.  What she could refuse, however, is his offer to sleep with a client.  After a very vocal argument at a local restaurant where she told him no, she discovers that he's been murdered that same weekend.  Now she's not only on the hot seat, she's been fired from her job and the new CEO has threatened her with being sued and ruined her chances of ever getting another job.  If Alex is to save her own career -- and life -- she needs to find out who killed the man and why...

This is the beginning of a new series and a hefty book for a cozy running at 428 pages.  Which isn't to say that I didn't want to read it, because I did.  But I also felt that a lot of it could have been trimmed down a tad since a lot of it wasn't needed to add to the story.

This book also had a lot of situations that were there to provide 'comic relief,' but just seemed off in the story, and because of that I had a hard time getting through this book. Turning off her electricity, a new sister-in-law who's a thief, a grandmother who cooks inedible, grey food -- most of it just wasn't needed to get to the meat of the story, of which there was very little.

Alex's life was being sabotaged at every turn by employees of the P.R. firm, including an ex-boyfriend who made up lies to get his fifteen minutes of fame -- and she didn't even confront him about it.  However, there was a very funny scene at the unemployment office which I thought should have set the tone for the rest of the book, it didn't.

Actually, the character I liked best was the British neighbor, Ian Sterling, but we will have to wait and see if he is in any of the other books.  I will say that while I wasn't enthralled with this first one, I will read the second -- but only if it isn't the heft of this one, since we don't need the extraneous information to carry a mystery.  

In the end, I had already known the murderer, because it wasn't difficult to figure out who was setting up Alex to take a fall, although it just wasn't all that intriguing, to be honest.  The way the murderer was captured also wasn't all that intriguing, and there wasn't really a decent climax, but again, I'll probably pick up the next to find out in which direction the series is going to go.

https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Red-Herring-Mystery/dp/1496716566/ref

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3403586161

More on Dana Dratch's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/d/dana-dratch/