Varnished Without a Trace (A Tallie Graver Mystery #5)

Author:  Misty Simon

Genre:   Mystery

Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book

ISBN #:  9781496723765

Kensington Publishing

304 Pages

$7.99; $6.89 Amazon

September 29, 2020

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This Christmas, Tallie Graver would like to take a break from running her cleaning business to be with her boyfriend, Max, and enjoy their first holiday together -- alone.  Instead, she's stuck keeping her mother and grandmother from duking it out during the town's annual Christmas Eve bingo game.  As for festive spirit, she'll have to settle for her mean-spirited Aunt Ronda, whose mouth could use some soap..

The night only gets worse after Tallie discovers Ronda's body.  It seems someone cleaned her clock with a can of varnish.  While all the evidence points to Ronda's husband, Tallie doesn't believe her beloved Uncle Hoagie could do such a dirty deed.  Of course, his sudden disappearance doesn't help his case.  If Tallie hopes to clear his name, she'll need to dig up some dirt to locate the real killer.  Otherwise, someone else could get rubbed out...

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

It's nearing Christmas and Tallie's unlikable grandmother is visiting.  All she does is argue, and no one wants to spend time with her.  But Tallie has agreed to be a buffer between her and Tallie's mother, so they go to bingo together.  But when Tallie is shifted from her seat by a bingo regular, she finds herself sitting between a nice woman and her Aunt Ronda, who also has problems being nice to people.  After an uncomfortable night, Ronda leaves in a huff and forgets her purse.  Tallie runs out the back to give it to her, and finds Ronda -- dead from a blow to the head.  When Ronda's husband, Tallie's Uncle Hoagie, disappears the same night, he's suspected of murdering her.  

But more than this is happening to Tallie:  her uncle Sherman, who's the fire chief, has asked for her help in locating an arsonist that no one is able to catch.  He's depending on Tallie's being able to notice details and her instincts to help him, if she can.  To top it off, her boyfriend Max has announced at the dinner table that he'd be happy to help her father run the mortuary, leaving Tallie free to run her cleaning company, but stunning her at the same time.  Now Tallie's trying to find an arsonist, locate her uncle Hoagie, and decide what to do about Max.  If she can stay alive - again - she might be able to figure it all out...

This is the fifth book in the series and probably the best.  While I figured out what was going on with Hoagie early on in the book, it was still a lot of fun to watch everyone else figure it out along the way.  I loved the fact that Tallie isn't afraid to speak her mind, and she's not an bumbling idiot running into problems because she didn't think them out first.  She's intelligent, and I like that above all things.  I also like the new direction in the friendship between Tallie and Burton; and in this book we learn more about his past and why he is the way he is.  It's bringing more life to the characters involved, and pulling you deeper into their own lives.  It's highly enjoyable.

The story line was one of the best so far, and I loved the fact that Tallie is finding out her own strengths and knows what she wants out of life.  She's able to run a business and still have time for her family and friends, and solve a murder or two along the way.  I also like the fact that she gets her ducks in a row before blindly heading out and getting caught up in bad situations.  It makes the entire book a real pleasure to read.

I also love to read any books about Christmas, and while this one doesn't center on the holiday, it still has enough touches where you know it's there.  There is a presence of family around the table, and conversations much as all families have, along with the siblings arguing over one thing or another.  Days gone by in my household (I live far from my own family); but remembrances live on.

When we get closer to the end of the story everything starts to come together, with surprises still at hand that I don't think anyone could have seen coming.  The ending itself was done wonderfully, giving us a tale that ended satisfactorily and also things to look forward to in the next book.  Highly recommended.

https://www.amazon.com/Varnished-without-Tallie-Graver-Mystery/dp/1496723767/ref

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3471758508

More on Misty Simon's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/s/misty-simon/

Carpet Diem (A Tallie Graver Mystery #4)

Author:  Misty Simon

Genre:   Mystery

Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book

ISBN #:  9781496723741

Kensington Publishing

277 Pages

$7.99; $5.99 Amazon

September 24, 2019

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Now that Tallie Graver's cleaning business is starting to shine, she's ready to go squeegee to squeegee against Audra McNeal for a major contract at the Astercromb mansion.   Tallie's not afraid of a little friendly competition from the new cleaner in town.  In fact, Tallie likes Audra, though she wonders how her glamorous rival manages to clean house and maintain her fancy manicure.  Tallie has her rubber-gloves full staying one step ahead of her nemesis.  Until she finds a well-polished hand poking out of a rolled-up carpet, rendering her competition...dead.

Though it lands Tallie the big job, there's nothing tidy about Audra's death.  So between polishing and scrubbing, Tallie's determined to find the killer.  Hopefully the police chief doesn't mind her cluttering up his investigation with the filthy dealings she discovers.  Turns out Audra was not as squeaky clean as she appeared.  And confronting her killer could bring Tallie to a very foul end indeed...

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

Tallie Graver is finally happy since her disastrous marriage.  She has her own cleaning business with a good crew, a boyfriend she loves, two pets, and a town she's where she's happy.  But she's also working for her family part-time at their funeral parlor, which is fair since she lives above them, even if she doesn't like the job.  But all in all, she's making it work.

She's ready to bid on a job at a huge mansion, and is up against another cleaner who's just recently arrived in town - Audra McNeal.  When Tallie loses the job unfairly, she's angry.  But when she arrives at the mansion the next day to retrieve her cleaning supplies and her beloved vacuum cleaner, she sees that someone has thrown it into the dumpster behind the mansion.  So getting it back isn't going to be easy, but Tallie's not going to lose it.  However, she finds more than her vacuum...she finds the body of Audra, and now she's waist-high in a murder investigation.

When Chief Burton tells her to leave it alone, Tallie knows she can't, since she liked Audra.  So he bends a little, telling her she can garner information, but that's it.  When Tallie - with the help of her boyfriend Max - digs a bit into Audra, she finds she wasn't the person Tallie thought she was, and might have actually been an enemy.  But because her employee Letty asked her to help since Letty's cousin is a suspect, she won't let go.  Unfortunately, neither will the killer, who's keeping an eye on Tallie as well as her investigation.  If Tallie doesn't hurry, it won't end well and her cleaning days will be over...

This is the fourth book in the series and I have to say that it's one of my favorites.  Tallie's business is taking off, and this book concerns that fact.  There's plenty of things going on at once - her boyfriend is in town for awhile, she's running a business, deciding what she really wants to do with her future, and of course, attempting to locate a killer.  This time out, she's also coming to understand Chief Burton more via her cousin Matt, and I think (and hope) it will bring them to a better understanding of each other.  I agree with Burton that she should become a private investigator, but if not, the series is fine just the way it is.

The clues leading up to the murderer aren't all that apparent, and while I wasn't supremely surprised, there was still a bit of me that was.  The motive for the murder seemed twisted in itself, but with a twisted mind you can't expect anything else.  I enjoyed the ending quite a bit, and it gives us something to look forward to in the next in the series.  Recommended.

https://www.amazon.com/Carpet-Diem-Tallie-Graver-Mystery/dp/1496723740/ref

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3470069103

More on Misty Simon's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/s/misty-simon/

Deceased and Desist (A Tallie Graver Mystery #3)

Author:  Misty Simon
Genre:   Mystery

Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9781496712257
Kensington Publishing
259 Pages
$7.99; $6.15 Amazon
November 7, 2018

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Most housecleaners don't do windows, but Tallie Graver loves leaving a pane of glass streak-free and sparkling.  After a dirty divorce from a filthy-rich jerk, she's started her own cleaning business to make ends meet.  On her latest job, prepping a renovated bed and breakfast for a grand re-opening, she's standing outside on a ladder, wiping off a grimy pane, when she spies a man on a bed through the glass.  But the B&B isn't open for business yet - and the man's not sleeping.  Her family owns the Graver Funeral Home, so Tallie knows a corpse when she sees one.

The victim is a shady building inspector with a reputation for handing out passing grades for a greased palm.  With the local police resistant, Tallie launches her own investigation, before she gets a rep as the town crank.  But it's going to take more than a squirt bottle and a squeegee to clean up this mess.  With the help of her gal pal Gina, Tallie searches for a killer's motive.  But she'd better be careful, or it'll be curtains for this window cleaner...

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

Tallie Graver divorced her wealthy husband and left her old life behind to move back home.  She lives above her parents' mortuary, where she also works part-time, but the job she loves doing is cleaning homes - sometimes for the people she used to socialize with.  While cleaning windows for a local inn, she looks in one of them and sees a dead man.  She knows he must have been murdered, because his head was cocked at an unnatural angle.  But since her sometimes-friend Police Chief Burton has been out of commission due to an accident, she now has to deal with Detective Hammond, an unlikable man from another precinct who is taking over for awhile.  

Detective Hammond dislikes Tallie on sight, and seems to know an awful lot about her even though they've never met.  He tells her it was a heart attack, and she doesn't believe him, nor does anyone else -- except her best friend Gina.  When Tallie decides to look into the murder - as she's convinced it was one - she finds out that the man was an unscrupulous home inspector who was into more than inspecting homes.  And with support from an unlikely and surprising source, Tallie and Gina are on the tail of a killer.  Now if Tallie can just stay alive long enough to find out who it is...

This is the third book in the series, and I must say that I really enjoyed it.  Tallie is coming more into her own in this book, and not whining about what could have been.  She's happy in her job, has a new boyfriend that she's falling in love with, and even though she's not rich, she's doing what she wants, and that counts for a lot.  Unfortunately, her father wants her to quit cleaning houses and come to work at the mortuary full time, which is causing a tad bit stress as she tries to put off coming to a decision in that quarter.

When she starts digging, she comes in contact with the dead man's secretary, who seems to be hiding things of her own, and may know more than she's telling.  Tallie and Gina - who's also having problems on her own end - refuse to stop looking, and therefore come into close contact again with Hammond, who unreasonably (as Tallie believes) hates her.  But then Tallie begins to wonder why that's so, and how he knows everything about her.

What ensues is a very nice mystery that soon turns into more than that, and while Tallie doesn't walk into dangerous situations, sometimes things just seem to find her to cause more problems.  But there are a few turns, and more than a few surprises, to bring us to the motive for murder and how we may have been off the mark just a little in that area.  At any rate, when the ending comes, it was worth the read and I plan to continue with this series.  Recommended.

https://www.amazon.com/Deceased-Desist-Tallie-Graver-Mystery/dp/1496712250/ref

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3462910980

More on Misty Simon's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/s/misty-simon/

Grounds for Remorse (A Tallie Graver Mystery #2)

Author:  Misty Simon
Genre:   Mystery

Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9781496712233
Kensington Mystery
281 Pages
$6.47; $6.15 Amazon
May 29, 2018

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Best friends Tallie Graver and Gina Laudermilch both seem to spend a lot of time around urns.  For Tallie, they're part and parcel of the family business, Graver's Funeral Home.  Even though she's traded ashes for dusting with her own cleaning business, she still works part-time for her folks and lives above the funeral parlor.  For Gina, they're the vessels that contain her heavenly brew at her coffee shop, Bean There, Done That.  And both women are learning that owning a business can mkae finding time for romance challenging.

But when Gina's new beau turns out to have a wife, who barges into the coffee shop to take him home, she can't contain her bitterness and loudly threatens to poison his cup or boil him in a vat of coffee.  So when Mr. Wrong turns up dead at the bottom of a staircase inside Gina's locked home, she finds herself at the top of the police's suspect list.  Tallie needs to sweep in to save her friend.  But she'll need to watch her step, or she may go from being a funeral home employee to becoming their next client...

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

Tallie Graver lives above her family's funeral home and works there part-time while also running her own cleaning service.  Today though, she's helping at her friend Gina's coffee shop across the street while Gina is getting ready to go on a date.  Tallie knows that Gina's new boyfriend Craig Johnson is attractive enough and attentive enough, but she still feels there's something "off" about him.  Gina's mother Shirley feels the same way, but neither are mentioning it.

Gina seems all happy smiles when she talks with Craig, but that happiness is short-lived.  A woman comes in screaming and attacks Gina for seeing her husband - who happens to be Craig.  Gina, who had no idea, starts screaming herself and making threats toward Craig.  After he leaves with his wife, Gina is rightfully incensed.

Tallie's boyfriend Max is also visiting from D.C., which is three hours away.  They have ten whole days together, and Tallie's happy as a clam.  But that doesn't last long when she tells him to meet her at Gina's, and he does - after he's had a vase of flowers thrown at him and slugged in the jaw.  It turns out Craig just isn't going to give up, regardless of Gina never wanting to see him again.

But she does...at the bottom of her stairwell, dead.  And while Tallie is told in no uncertain terms to leave it alone, she's not going to, especially when Gina is suspect number one, and the widow is determined to see her jailed.  Now Tallie's out to find a killer, but it's not easy when it turns out Craig had more than one secret...so which one got him killed and by whom?

First, I have to say this (and get the negative stuff out of the way):  I'll never understand why women go after the 'other woman' instead of their cheating husbands.  He's the one who's married.  He's the one who disrespected his wife and his vows.  But yet they attack the girlfriend without even finding out if she knew he was married.  Why aren't they blaming their rotten husbands?  Just sayin'

There were a couple of errors in the book such as using the word 'collaborate' instead of 'corroborate' - collaborate means to work with, while corroborate means to verify.  Any good editor should have been able to correct these before it went to print.  However, I didn't allow it to spoil my enjoyment at all, since I knew what was meant.  (Spellcheck wouldn't work since they're both words, but an editor should have known better).

I also get that Gina's in trouble, but Tallie hasn't seen Max in three weeks, and she pretty much foists him off on anyone so that she can try to find a killer.  Max is a pretty nice guy and understands Tallie's need to help Gina, but he winds up spending practically his entire vacation working and Tallie never even brings it up or makes it up to him.  She doesn't even think that 'hey, Max is on vacation so why am I making him work instead of enjoying it?' and Max's response is he's still spending time with Tallie, so it's okay.  No, it's not.  He'll need a vacation when he goes back home to get over this one.

But I did like the fact that Burton isn't the 'evil nemesis' he was in the first book.  He's beginning to allow Tallie a little more room, and she, in turn, is keeping him in the loop with what information she uncovers.  (I really, really, hate the 'evil nemesis' that seems prevalent in a lot of books - it detracts from the story and adds absolutely nothing).  We see a lot of transformation in the story from several different characters, and it opens things up to new beginnings, which will be interesting in future books.

While there isn't a lot of intrigue, there is an interesting plot, and I enjoyed following Tallie from person to person, gleaning what information she can.  Every encounter she has she thinks about what she can ask that person to help prove Gina innocent.  Tallie has a devious mind.  It's rather fun to watch her go about it.

When the ending comes and the killer is revealed, it's a motive as old as time, but the story was done well, and while it started out slow I stuck with it and it became more absorbing as I read.  I'm glad I didn't stop reading, because the ending was worth it and I look forward to the next in the series.  Recommended.

https://www.amazon.com/Grounds-Remorse-Tallie-Graver-Mystery/dp/1496712234/ref

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2929465502

More on Misty Simon's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/s/misty-simon/