River City Dead (An Aggie Mundeen Mystery #4)

Author:  Nancy G. West
Genre:  Mystery, Suspense

Hardcover, Paperback, Ebook
ISBN #:  9781635111361, 9781635111330
Henery Press
224 Pages
January 17, 2017

✮✮✮✮✮

Advice columnist Aggie Mundeen and SAPD Detective Sam Vanderhoven plan their first rendezvous at a San Antonio River Walk hotel during Fiesta Week - sumptuous sights, sounds, and festivities in the middle of America's Venice.  A vacation from crime and a reset for their tumultuous relationship.

But murder descends on the Casa Prima Hotel.  Disturbing revelations surface about the Fabulous Femmes, Aggie's new friends holding a convention.  Evil emerges at parties in La Villita.  Calamity plagues Aggie's debut dance performance at Arneson River Theater, the celebration is skewed by carousing, crazies and corpses.  Even in idyllic River City, crime complicates relationships.

********

Aggie Mundeen is planning her first rendezvous with the love of her life, SAPD Detective Sam Vanderhoven.  He's gotten them a suite at a San Antonio River Walk hotel during Fiesta Week when everything will be festive, noisy and fun.  The only problem is there's a dead body in the suite they were supposed to have, and there's not another one available in the entire city.  So Aggie and Sam, who's involved in the case now, have to make do in separate cubbyholes until the case is solved.

While Sam wants Aggie to go home, there's a problem: Aggie knew the dead woman, Monica - she was the ex-daughter-in-law of her friend and neighbor Grace, and she'd recently had lunch with her.  In Aggie's mind, that makes her just as involved as Sam even if he doesn't think so.  So when Aggie meets and befriends members of a dance troupe who are performing during the fiesta, she finds out they all knew the dead girl too, and she refuses to leave but tells him she'll stay out of his way and share any information she discovers with him.

While Aggie is able to do so to some extent, she still manages to investigate on her own without telling Sam, and while Aggie's doing her best to trust Sam it seems she doesn't trust him enough to share everything, which could be the real stumbling block in their relationship.  If Aggie doesn't figure her things out soon, her budding romance with Sam might also be dead...

I loved this latest installment in the Aggie Mundeen Mysteries.  In this book, the fourth in the series, she's less age-obsessed and more concerned with making things work between her and Sam.  Unfortunately for her, it's a bit difficult when what started as a lovely weekend ends abruptly when one finds a dead body in their suite.

Aggie is very good at asking questions without people becoming suspicious of her motives, and when she thinks someone just might be, she's smart enough to change the subject.  She's also able to think quickly and come up with plans on the spur of the moment - as Aggie herself says, she's spontaneous; and that makes her likable and rather endearing to both Sam and readers.

We are seeing Aggie slowly learning that in order to be trusted, you must first trust in return, and Sam, poor saintly man, deals with it admirably (although I think a lot of this comes from the fact that he's a homicide detective and he wouldn't be a very good one if he didn't have patience).

When we finally find out the identity of the murderer it comes as a surprise, which it should be, and makes it an even more entertaining read than we would have thought.  This latest installment is the best yet in my opinion, Aggie and Sam are perfect foils for each other (even if they don't quite yet realize it) and I look forward to the next in the series.  Highly recommended.

https://www.amazon.com/River-City-Aggie-Mundeen-Mystery/dp/1635111331/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1908467885

More on Nancy G. West's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/w/nancy-g-west/

Smart But Dead (An Aggie Mundeen Mystery)

Author:  Nancy G. West
Genre:  Mystery

Hardcover; Paperback; Ebook
ISBN #:  9781943390281; 9781493390250
Henery Press Publishing
246 Pages
$31.95; $15.95; $4.99
November 17, 2015

Four Stars

Skirting forty and appalled by the prospect of descending into middle-age decrepitude, Aggie Mundeen blasts off to the local university to study the genetics of aging.  In addition to providing youthful hints for readers of her column, "Stay Young with Aggie," Aggie is doggedly determined to stay young.  Despite conflicts with her professor, she learns about the Human Genome project and DNA.  When she discovers a dead body, Detective Sam reminds her not to "help" with the investigation.  But dangerously curious and programmed to prod, she races to solve the crime, winds up the prime suspect, and is on target to become the next campus corpse. 

********

Aggie Mundeen lives in San Antonio, Texas, and writes a newspaper column, "Stay Young with Aggie."  She's terrified of getting older, and is constantly looking for ways to maintain her youth.  In this vein, she is taking a college class about the Human Genome project and DNA.  But after asking questions one day in class, her professor, Kermit Carmody, drops dead.  She becomes suspicious that he might have been murdered, and decides to solve the case on her own, because she thinks it will make Detective Sam Vanderhoven, the object of her affections, realize he can't live without her.

First off, Aggie doesn't seem to realize she's thirty-nine, hardly even close to a rocking chair.  She also has a limited amount of self-esteem, thinking if she ages Sam won't even be interested in her.  What she fails to realize is that she's independent and successful.  Aggie never seems to come to terms that perhaps what she needs is to figure out why she thinks the way she does, even when others in the story (including Sam) point things out to her.  Happiness can't be found with another person until you find the happiness within yourself.

But I digress:  After her professor dies, Aggie is sure he was murdered - she just doesn't know how.  So she sets about thinking of ways to find out the killer, and more importantly, what it was that got him killed.  Aggie is sure it has something to do with his research into anti-aging.  But who?  She becomes suspicious of everyone in the class, and everyone he worked with.

So much so, that she goes around actively seeking people and asking them questions - just until they begin to get suspicious, then she backs off.  Even when Aggie is attacked one night, she not only doesn't tell Sam what happened, she doesn't stop investigating...and finally it leads to the fact that she discovers another dead body, and is accused of burglary and murder and booked into jail.  But does this stop our intrepid Aggie?  No.  The minute she's released, she decides she wants to find out who killed the second person, and clear herself of the crime.

It seems Aggie has an uncanny ability to put herself in all manner of eventful situations that aren't healthy to her.  For someone who's interested in anti-aging, she seems to be going into things that can age a person pretty fast.  Yet, as we know, all will come about in the end, and the murderer will be found.  But after that...does Aggie finally get the response from Sam that she's looking for?  You'll have to read the book to find out; there are some things I just won't tell...  Recommended.

http://www.amazon.com/SMART-BUT-DEAD-Nancy-West/dp/1943390282/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1543139379

More on Nancy G. West's books:  http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/w/nancy-g-west/ 

                                                   

Fit to Be Dead

Author:  Nancy G. West
Genre:  Mystery

Four Stars

Aggie Mundeen, single and pushing forty, fears nothing but middle age. When she moves from Chicago to San Antonio, she decides she better shape up before anybody discovers she writes the column, “Stay Young with Aggie.” She takes Aspects of Aging at University of the Holy Trinity and plunges into exercise at Fit and Firm.

Rusty at flirting and mechanically inept, she irritates a slew of male exercisers, then stumbles into murder. She’d like to impress the attractive detective with her sleuthing skills. But when the killer comes after her, the health club evacuates semi-clad patrons, and the detective has to stall his investigation to save Aggie's derriere.

********

Aggie Mundeen is a single woman who has left her bank job (after investing a tidy amount) and moving to San Antonio, Texas, to be near the only real friend she has, her police detective friend Sam.  Sam was married to Aggie's friend Katie, but after she died, he moved to San Antonio to start again.  She wants to be more-than-friends with Sam, but doesn't know how he feels about her.

Aggie is taking classes at the local university in aspects of aging.  Aggie, it seems, is terrified of getting old, and is willing to do anything to delay that process.  Even if it means joining a health club, which she reluctantly does.  (Reluctantly, because she doesn't like to exercise).  On her first visit, she decides to use the pool, and when she gets in, there is a young woman apparently dead or dying.  She pulls her from the pool and the paramedics are called.  When the young woman, Holly, recovers, she starts blurting things out, and Aggie discovers that Holly had a child she recently gave away and now regrets.  Before Aggie can find out any more, Holly bolts.

Soon after, Holly is run over by a car and killed.  Aggie suspects it wasn't an accident, and doesn' think the "accident" at the pool was one, either; and decides to find the killer herself, because she figures that it will impress Sam and he will like her enough to want to be with her (I have no idea why she thinks this, but you soon find out Aggie's mind is a little warped on some things).  She also knows if she mentions anything to Sam about Holly being murdered, he will tell her to stay out of the investigation.  So, when Aggie starts to nose around, things begin to happen - to her.  Yet does she give up the investigation?  No.  Does she tell Sam?  No.  She plunges forward, even involving her friend Meredith; Without telling Meredith what she's really doing, of course.

I felt the beginning of the book was slow, when Aggie was sick.  (Let's just say nothing she ate would stay where she originally put it).  Anyway, as things progressed, the book definitely got better.  And, in fact, there were some flat out funny scenes that made me laugh out loud.  An especially funny one that included the members of the health club.

As we get closer to the murderer (and the person who was making the attempts on Aggie's life), things get twisted.  So twisted, that you could be driving down that road in San Francisco and it would be more direct.  Subplots wove in and out of the main one - which was to find Holly's killer - and you couldn't find closer connections if you were knitting an afghan.  Yet the clues weren't easy to spot (and even if I did, I never made the connections myself - mainly because it didn't appear that there were any).  Everything that was supposed to be a clue, panned out to be something else entirely.  But the clues are there.  Just don't give yourself a headache looking for them.  Even Aggie's story was woven into all the others - and she does have a story, true enough; and I found it interesting how everything tied together.

An easy read, enjoyable; recommended for anyone who likes mysteries with a bit of humor thrown in.  Four stars for the slow beginning, but stick with it, you'll be glad you did.

http://www.amazon.com/Fit-Dead-Aggie-Mundeen-Mystery/dp/1940976375/