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

⭐⭐⭐

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.

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

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/

Paw and Order

Author:  Spencer Quinn
Genre:  Mystery

Five Stars

In the seventh book in the brilliant New York Times bestselling mystery series, canine narrator Chet and P.I. Bernie journey to Washington, DC, and the dog-eat-dog world of our nation’s capital.

Stephen King has called Chet “a canine Sam Spade full of joie de vivre.” Robert B. Parker dubbed Spencer Quinn’s writing “major league prose.” Now the beloved team returns in another suspenseful novel that finds Chet sniffing around the capital city and using his street smarts to uncover a devilish plot.

Chet and Bernie pay a visit to Bernie’s girlfriend, Suzie Sanchez, a crack reporter living in far-off Washington, DC. She’s working on a big story she can’t talk about, but when her source, a mysterious Brit with possible intelligence connections, runs into trouble of the worst kind, Bernie suddenly finds himself under arrest.

Meanwhile Chet gets to know a powerful DC operative who may or may not have the goods on an ambitious politician. Soon Chet and Bernie are sucked into an international conspiracy, battling unfamiliar forces under the blinking red eyes of a strange bird that Chet notices from the get-go but seems to have slipped by everybody else. Most menacing of all is Barnum, a guinea pig with the fate of the nation in his tiny paws.

As Harry Truman famously quipped, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” Too bad he didn’t get to meet Chet!

********

For those of you who have never read any of these wonderful mysteries, Bernie Little is a private investigator, along with his partner, Chet.  Together they will take on practically any case, and they are very good at what they do.  There is an early scene in this book in which Chet and Bernie are at a barbeque restaurant full of bikers.  In the ensuing action, you discover that Bernie is no ordinary detective.  He is not only able to hold his own, he has wit, intelligence, speed and strength.  Chet is no slouch, either.

This book is different in that everything is told from Chet's point of view.  Did I mention that Chet is Bernie's dog?  He's an (almost) hundred pound K-9 dropout who is just as smart as Bernie, and not only protects him, actually helps him in his cases.

This time around, Bernie is a little bored with his routine, and missing his girlfriend Suzie Sanchez, who has moved to Washington, D.C. to further her career as a journalist.  So he decides, unannounced, to visit her, and when he arrives he sees a well-dressed man exiting the cottage where Suzie lives.  Obviously not happy about this turn of events, he confronts Suzie, whose tells him that the visior, Eben, a British national, is someone she is working with on a story.  When Eben is murdered shortly thereafter, Bernie is first arrested for the murder, then released just as quickly.  Now making it much more personal for Bernie, he is stunned when Eben's father hires him to find out who killed his son.

While ferreting out the fact from fiction, Chet and Bernie realize that between the politics and intrigue lies something that covers two continents and could possibly lead straight to the White House if Bernie doesn't figure it out in time.

Chet is his usual self, discovering things the humans don't find out until later, and trying to understand why Bernie acts as he does; but never questioning anything, because he knows that Bernie is the smartest person he's ever met.  What puzzles Chet the most is the strange bird that follows them everywhere, from Suzie's house to when they're on the road in Virginia.  Although he keeps trying to let Bernie know, he's oblivious to Chet's attempts to call his attention to it.  When Bernie finally sees what Chet sees, he realizes that Suzie has stumbled upon something that could put her in danger, and his highest priority is to keep her safe.

This is a highly enjoyable read, with Chet at his dogged best (pun intended), and Bernie hot on the trail of a cold-blooded killer; not willing to rest until he finds the answers he's looking for, no matter who the murderer is.  A highly recommended read, especially for those looking for something just a little bit different.

http://www.amazon.com/Paw-Order-Bernie-Mystery-Series/dp/1476703396/

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1024625287