Off the Books (A Novel Idea Mystery #5)

Author:  Lucy Arlington
Genre:  Mystery

Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9780425276679
Berkley Publishing
304 Pages
$7.19; $7.99 Amazon
February 2, 2016

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The Novel Idea Literary Agency has planned a wedding themed week for Inspiration Valley, celebrating not only North Carolina's best vendors but also some of the agency's most popular bridal books.  The fact that Lila can use the event to plan her own impending nuptials is just the icing on the cake.

But wedding bells turn to warning bells when Lila finds a dead man facedown in the frosting.  Soon it's discovered that the victim was connected to several Novel Idea authors, all of whom quickly become suspects in the case.  It's up to Lila and her fellow agents to find the real killer before one of their clients winds up scribbling stories from behind bars...

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Lila Wilkins works for a literary agency in Illumination Valley, North Carolina.  It's her dream job, and she's happy to have it.  During a bridal expo and book fair that the agency is hosting, a handyman is murdered, and Lila is once again the person to find the body.  While many agree he wasn't a very good handyman and had reason to dislike him, how many of those people wanted to kill him?  At least one, apparently, and it's up to Lila and her friends to find the killer in order to save their expo.  But will Lila be putting herself - or her friends in danger while searching for someone who has killed before and might very well kill again?...

Well, this is the last book in the series and it's probably about time to put it out of its misery anyway.  Although I know there are people who think this series is wonderful, I'm just a person who pays attentions to details, and there are plenty of wrong ones in this book.

So Vicky the Viper loves cats but hates dogs.  She threatens to quit if they don't get rid of the King Charles spaniel, Olive.  They're not destructive dogs (but any dog can be) as they're bred to be inside pets, very loving and even lap dogs.  So why the behavior?  Is the dog fearful?  Apprehensive?  Have they taken her to a vet to see if it's a medical condition?  No!  They just give the dog away to a group of children at a home.  Dogs need to have an alpha.  Who's the alpha in a group of children that will eventually change over time?  I'm sorry, but no office manager is so good that she (or he) should be allowed to dictate to the owner of the company what to do.

While I'm not surprised her mother found a boyfriend - this is 'Happy Valley' after all, where everyone falls in love of has something else wonderful happen to them, I always thought her mother would be old and unattractive.  Why, you ask?  She drinks Jim Beam.  A lot.  Alcohol is a hepatoxin, which means it's a toxin to the cells that detoxify your body; it makes you sallow, pasty, and gives you huge pores over time - especially if you drink as much as Althea.  It dehydrates the skin and gives wrinkles.  Who would find that attractive?

So Lila still has feelings (somewhat) for Jude and Makayla calls her on it, saying Jude is a player and Sean is the best.  What does Makayla know?  She never spends time with Sean and Lila...and Sean never spends time with Lila unless he wants sex.  He can't take time in the spring to get married?  His job is so demanding he can't make his own wedding until September?  Does this sound like a man in love who wants to start a new life with someone?  Gee, honey, my job is so important but yours isn't!  We have to plan the wedding around when I can get some time off, because you can take time off any time you want!  He doesn't even love her enough to take time to pick out an engagement ring, or have her go with him.  She's so stupid she just mopes around with longing and wishes she had an engagement ring, and isn't even wondering why he never spends time with her.  He's not working 24 hours a day every single day, so what is he doing?  He's sure not spending time with her.  Maybe Jude is onto something and everyone else is just so dumb they don't see it.

But the worst thing is her son just decided to quit college - that she's paying for - and move in with his grandmother without either of them telling her, so he can work as a cook in a restaurant because he wants to be a chef.  When she finds out - by eating at the restaurant - she naturally gets mad; but then the next day is nearly over it.  I don't know about other people, but I'd be pretty angry if my kid did this, and if my mother went behind my back instead of telling him to sit down and talk it over with me.  Angry and hurt.  It would take time to get over a betrayal by your own son and mother.  It was a lousy thing to do - and Sean takes their side over Lila's.  That should tell you all you need to know.

Because of these things, I didn't find the plot interesting enough to keep my attention throughout the book (who goes to a bridal expo where they have authors selling their books anyway?  If you're getting married, you're not interested in buying books at the same time.  I imagine it's possible, but it sure seems idiotic.

https://www.amazon.com/Off-Books-Novel-Idea-Mystery/dp/0425276678/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2402709161

More on Lucy Arlington's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/a/lucy-arlington/

Played by the Book (A Novel Idea Mystery Book 4)

Author:  Lucy Arlington
Genre:  Mystery

Mass Market Paperback, Digital Book
ISBN #:  9780425276631
Berkley Publishing
320 Pages
$7.99; $7.99 Amazon
February 13, 2015

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The owner of the Novel Idea Literary Agency is thrilled when former local boy and popular television show host Damian York returns to Inspiration Valley, North Carolina, to launch his new gardening book.  But Lila is less than excited about the hubbub when she sees her mounting to-do list.  Between planning York's gala and sprucing up her yard for another event, she's spread too thin - especially after she finds a skull buried in her flower beds.

As Lila's macabre discovery leads to other secrets hidden in Inspiration Valley's past, a member of the local garden club is found slumped over her prize roses - murdered.  Now it's up to Lila to dig through old mysteries and new clues to unearth a murderer before someone else is found pushing up daisies...

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When Lila Wilkins is told by her boss that she's going to be part of the garden walk during Inspiration Valley's Annual Garden Walk, there isn't a lot she can do.  But when she sets about pulling up Hawthorn bushes she comes across a skull in the garden.  She immediately calls her boyfriend Sean, who's a police detective, and they cordon off the area until they know more about it.  When it's discovered that the rest of the skeleton lies there also, it becomes a crime scene, and she's out of the running.

But not too much later one of the others on the garden walk is found dead in her home, and the police also have to deal with a murder.  Lila is suspicious of the president of the garden club, for the woman is a nasty piece of work, but her co-worker Vicky insists it's the woman's step-son, since he hated her.  Either way, there's another killer on the loose and Vicky wants Lila to find out who it is.  But in doing so, will Lila put herself - or her family - in harm's way, or will she find a murderer in time?

I should have known this wasn't going to be a stellar book when this book is about gardening but Lila has no clue what plant is in her office.  A Rhododendron is not like an ivy, and it doesn't grow like one; you certainly can't put it up above a cabinet.  I think she's mistaking Philodendron for Rhododendron - and I'm surprised no one has commented on this.  But anyway...

It only took four books to finally make Sean a homicide detective, although he was investigating murders from book one.  I guess in this town it's not a big deal if a patrol officer investigates.  Also, the author(s) can't figure out the name of the realty company:  in two books it's "Sherlock Homes" and in two books it's "Sherlock Holmes".  So which is it?  Homes or Holmes?  I guess the next book casts the deciding vote.  Also, why is Althea the only person in town to talk like a hillbilly?  Is she the only true native and everyone else moved there?  She can't even get her accent straight - she went from saying "lordy" to "lawdy" in this book; and "shug" in the last book to "sug" in this book - either the authors and/or editors aren't doing their jobs.

As I mentioned in my last review of this series, this town is so perfect it should be renamed 'Happy Valley' because everyone is just so nice (except the suspects, of course) and nearly no one has a bad attitude (Vicky the Viper is the only one I can think of - she's just unlikable as a character); but now, everyone can also write!  Both Jay and Makalya are getting book deals!  This town must be quite a ways away, because it's sure far from reality.  It’s bad enough the characters are practically cardboard - you never get a sense of even caring what happens to any of them - but they’re all extremely talented, literary-wise?  Pretty soon the people in this agency will be writing their own novels and sending them to publishers (FYI, this is not realistic for a literary agency, but I guess it’s not really supposed to be).  Plus, I don’t understand how Lila keeps her job since she’s never there.  

You don’t even has to guess who wins the Van Gogh award if you’ve read any of these books, and I don’t think I would be giving anything away if I told you the answer.  Just knowing who entered the gardening contest should tell you all you need to know. Everyone who lives in this town has something wonderful happen to them.  (Makayla and Jay get book deals and fall in love; the sandwich guy and the baker fall in love; well, you get the idea).  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out.  The minute this person enters the garden walk, you have your answer. 

Lila laments that Sean isn't making any time for her.  Does she even know what homicide detectives do?  Does she know that they're called out at all hours, all days?  If she's going to pout and be needy, then she needs to cut him loose and move on with her life.  Flora seemed over the top in this book, too.  She's an adult but goes off the deep end about something that happened in her past (and obviously didn't affect her much since she's happily married and usually bubbly).  Zach has turned into a jerk; he taunts Lila and Bentley lets him get away with it.  It's not funny, even though I believe the authors think it was meant to be.  Then, she helped incarcerate Addison's half-brother (whom she adored) and Addison hated her for it, but now they're practically best friends?  Okay, then... 

At the last, the plot 'theme' in this one was extremely close to another book in the series (and since this is only the fourth book, well, that’s a little too close I think).  Both used the growing up in foster homes angle (although they were carried in different directions).  Surely there are other plot lines that could have been used instead of the same basic idea for both books?  (In both books the foster system failed and was the motive for murder).

As you can see by my statements (or rants) I was not enamored by this book (nor have I been by any in the series).  In fact, the only reason I've stayed with them is because I genuinely like one of the authors and I was hoping that this series would improve along the way.  It hasn't.

https://www.amazon.com/Played-Book-Novel-Idea-Mystery/dp/0425276635/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2400717089

More on Lucy Arlington's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/a/lucy-arlington/

Books, Cooks, and Crooks (A Novel Idea #3)

Author:  Lucy Arlington
Genre:  Mystery

Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9780425252246
Berkley Publishing
304 Pages
$7.99; $7.99 Amazon
February 4, 2014

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Inspiration Valley, North Carolina, is bubbling with excitement for the Taste of the Town festival, and Lila is right in the middle of it all.  Along with her coworkers at the Novel Idea Literary Agency, Lila is organizing a grand celebrity chef event, featuring food television's biggest stars, complete with cooking demonstrations, cookbook giveaways, and even a culinary writing contest.

But just as the celebration is about to start, the demo kitchen blows up, taking one of the star cooks with it.  With all the explosive egos of the cook's colleagues, it's hard to find someone who didn't have a motive to eliminate the competition.  Now Lila will have to scramble to figure out which of her clients is a killer - before someone else gets burned.

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Lila Wilkins, along with the rest of the agents at A Novel Idea literary agency, are planning the first Books and Cooks Festival and have several authors lined up to attend.  But when they arrive, it's obvious that there's more brewing under the surface with them than there is in a coffee pot.  They don't like each other, and the main attraction, as it were, Klara Patrick, has been making snide remarks to everyone about their cooking, which is making emotions run high.

After a particularly heated encounter, one of the chefs leaves in a huff, and then there is an explosion in the kitchen shortly after.  When it is determined he's been killed, it doesn't take the police long to figure out that he was murdered.  But discovering the reason why or the person responsible isn't going to be easy, and when another chef is also killed, it's obvious that whomever is doing this has some serious hatred toward the deceased.  But figuring it out could be more complicated than anyone expects...

I really was hoping that the author(s) had improved this series by now, but in the first few pages Lila’s boyfriend cop almost sets the kitchen on fire because he doesn’t know not to add liquor to a pan that’s on high heat.  Really?  Also, he’s in his 50’s and he tells Lila that he can’t even scramble an egg.  Oh, sure.  A lifelong bachelor but he never learned to cook.  Not.  Even.  An.  Egg.  Is he so stupid he can't figure it out?  I sure hope he was joking, because how is he a cop if he’s this idiotic?

Also - and I've mentioned this before - where are the homicide detectives?  Patrol officers do not investigate murders, and if there's none in town they would import one from the nearest city.  I'm guessing he's a patrol cop, because not once has he been addressed as Detective Griffiths.  Not.  Once.  Another reason he's not very good at his job:  the person murdered wasn't supposed to be in the kitchen, and they never even looked for the real target; they just assumed someone wanted to kill that chef.  A real detective never would have made that assumption.

What didn't make sense:

Sean is talking to all the agents and he asks Franklin a question, and Franklin responds with "There are some things that I'd rather remain confidential.  Not everything about the private lives of my clients should be laid bare for all to see and judge."  When Sean agrees, what does Lila do?  In front of everyone, she points out that she gets the impression that Maurice and Joel were a couple at one time.  Did she not just hear Franklin say that some things should remain confidential?  Could she not have told Sean privately?  This, my friends, is what a busybody sounds like.  Butt into everyone's business and tell it for the world to know without thinking of ramifications.

At another point in the story when they're talking about Klara's affair, Jude mentions that he thinks Klara is perfectly capable of hurting another person, and Lila wants to know why he thinks that.  Hello!  She's having an affair!  Doesn't Lila think that's hurting another person?  Did she forget that her own husband was having an affair?  What.  A.  Moron!

Sean asks Lila to sit in while he's questioning suspects.  Say what?  Since when do the police allow private citizens - who have no connection to the case - to sit in on interviews?

She mentions that Ryan is 'obviously unstable' and therefore, dangerously unpredictable.  Again, the man just lost his wife.  Does she expect him to go shopping?

Bentley states that Vicky is one of the agents, which she's not.  She's the office manager, although she acts like she's the owner of the company.  If I had an office manager like her, we'd have a bit of a talk about her attitude, as in giving one to Lila when she goes to lunch.  Not to mention Vicky acts like she has a stick up her rear and is the least likable character in the book.

Speaking of book characters, every single resident of Inspiration Valley is so nice.  There isn't a normal person around them; not one crabby soul, no one who is miserable once in a while; they should rename the town Happy Valley.  They're all so poetic and loving and sweet.  I'm surprised the town's streets aren't covered in sugar while you wade through it, the people are so saccharine.

To top that off, I, for one, am getting really tired of nearly every character in the book quoting literary lines.  Geez, you'd think even one of them would get tired of doing it.  Not only that, they feel the need to tell us where the line derived from.  I'm sure if the reader were curious enough, we could look it up ourself.  Instead, we're given that information because it's assumed the reader is too stupid to figure things out in our own way, right?

At the last, why is Sean so willing to allow Lila to help investigate the crime - and now her mother, too?  They aren't officers, and shouldn't be investigating.  In fact, even when he says he doesn't want to talk about the case, he does anyway.  Oh, right - there's no homicide detective so he has no real idea of what guidelines to follow.  Never mind.

The ending felt forced - the killer just decided to tell Lila the truth out of the blue.  Why on earth would they think that Lila would just allow a killer to walk away?  There wasn't even any suspense building up, and even though the police said they had enough evidence, we never found out what it was.  There didn't seem to be any to this reader.

There is always the hope that the author will improve the series, but that hope is fast dimming as it continues.  Sorry, but there seems to be very little intelligence in this town.

https://www.amazon.com/Books-Cooks-Crooks-Novel-Mystery/dp/0425252248/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2398591032

More on Lucy Arlington's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/a/lucy-arlington/

Buried in a Book (A Novel Idea Mystery #1)

Author:  Lucy Arlington
Genre: Mystery

Hardcover (LP); Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9780425246191
Berkley Publishing
304 Pages
(Various) $7.19; $7.99
February 7, 2012

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After receiving her first pink slip at the age of forty-five, former newspaper journalist Lila Wilkins is desperate for work, even it means taking a pay cut.  After combing through the classifieds, Lila accepts an internship at A Novel Idea, a thriving literary agency in the utopian town of Inspiration Valley, North Carolina.

Lila can't imagine anything better than being paid to read, but with a crew of quirky coworkers and a sky-high stack of query letters, she doesn't exactly have time to discover the next great bestseller - especially when a penniless aspiring author drops dead in the agency's waiting room.

No one else seems too concerned about the man's demise, but when Lila uncovers a series of threatening letters, she's determined to uncover who killed the man's dreams of literary stardom...

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Lila Wilkins has lost her job at a newspaper and needs to find a new one fast.  She’s in luck when there’s an opening for an intern at a literary agency named A Novel Idea.  She’s going to need all the luck she can get when vagrant comes into the office and she’s told that he comes in daily, and has been doing so for awhile.  But when he comes in and doesn’t leave...because he’s dead...it changes the story.  Especially when it soon becomes apparent that he’s been murdered, but none of her coworkers seem to care.

On top of that, her seventeen-year-old son Trey has taken her car without permission and totaled it, along with ruining part of his college’s football field.  Now she has to figure out a way to get to work, and unfortunately, that way will be if she and Trey move in with her mother until she can sell her home and buy one in the town where she’ll be working.  At least it will be cheaper than taking the train every day.

But Lila is bothered by her co-workers’ coldness toward the death of Marlette and since the police have arson and another death to deal with (after all, he was only a vagrant) so she decides to find justice for the man herself.  But in doing so, will she find a murderer or will they find her?

I really wanted to like this book because it had a great premise - a woman who finds a career with a literary agency - but there was so much wrong with it that just didn’t make sense.  First, once the police knew it was a homicide, why didn’t they assign a homicide detective?  Officer Griffiths investigated the murder, which didn’t make sense, since street officers don’t do that kind of thing; and I’m guessing he was a street officer, because why would a homicide detective show up with an ambulance if they didn’t know it was a murder?

Secondly, why did her mother have such a strong accent and she didn’t?  You’d think she’d sound a little bit like the person who birthed her, but there wasn’t even a southern endearment out of her mouth (Not even one ‘sugar’ came forth).  That also seemed rather odd to me,  On top of this, Lila apologizes to the person who almost got her killed!  Lila said she was sorry when the person said Lila ruined their life!  What the...?  She should have told them “Are you kidding?  You nearly got me killed!”  How stupid is this woman?  I would have let them have it both barrels right there in the street!

But the third was the situation with her son Trey.  He’s seventeen, and she has no problem turning him loose with strangers (even if her mother knew them, she didn’t). She just allowed this teenager to go off and live in the woods - and she didn’t even wonder what his living arrangements would be.  She was never curious where he was living (in a cabin?  In the forest?) or where he was sleeping (perhaps with a rock for his head).  What kind of mother cares more about the death of a stranger than she does the welfare of her own son?  HE’S SEVENTEEN. If he liked Iris, then she should have told him he could date her on the weekends, but he needed to live with her.

In fact, at the beginning of the book she tells him he needs to get a summer job and help pay off the damage he caused and he balks at it; yet when he moves to the co-op, he decides he wants to work - but he’s not getting paid.  So basically this is another entitled kid who leaves his mother to clean up his messes.  If he was so mature, why didn’t he realize he needed to help his mom pay what he damaged?  That’s immature, and shows he should have been made to come home.

The book left the irresponsibility of Trey as being perfectly fine, the fact that there wasn’t a detective assigned to the case - and the cop shouldn’t have made a pass at her while she was involved in the investigation (which she was).  That also shows irresponsibility on the officer’s part.  These are difficult to get past when they could have been so easily remedied, and the reason why I couldn’t like it as well as I wanted to.  

https://www.amazon.com/Buried-Book-Novel-Idea-Mystery/dp/0425246191/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2396511047

More on Lucy Arlington's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/a/lucy-arlington/