Murder on the Ghost Walk

Author:  Ellen Elizabeth Hunter
Genre:  Mystery

4 Stars

 

Home to some of the Old South's most famous Ghost walks, historic Wilmington's "Haunted" mansions delight thrill seekers and the the curous alike.  For Ashley Wilkes, newly commissioned to work as historic preservationist on one of Orange Street's stunning antebellum homes, it's not ghosts she tangles with, but actual dead bodies.

 

Two skeletons - possibly the remains of owners believed to have left town suddenly and under strange circumstances- have added more spice to the season.  Ashley starts poking around, suspecting there is more to the grisly discovery than meets the eye.  As she digs into the walls and the mystery, she finds shocking clues that tell her a killer is poised and ready to strike...before she uncovers the scandalous truth at the heart of the crime.

 

********

 

I read this book because it takes place at Halloween - I always like to 'Read the Season,' as it were, and I am glad I did.

 

So here we have Ashley Wilkes, historic preservationist, on her first important job, restoring a home for a television personality, Mirabelle Morgan.  It is not an easy job, either.  Ms. Morgan is one of those people who wants everything done her way, the kind of person who is referred to with the capital "B" in front of their nickname (if you get my drift).  When she's not making life a living nightmare for Ashley, she is doing so for everyone else who works for her.

 

When Ashley discovers the skulls buried in the walls of the house, Mirabelle, instead of being horrified, decides this will be great for her television show ratings and wants the kitchen finished sooner than ever, so that she can begin filming in her new home.  However, this does not go over too well with others, and soon Ashley finds that not only must she contend with police keeping her from restoring the home, but with people who want Mirabelle out of the way - permanently.

 

So now Ashley, who is doing some sleuthing on her own to find out if the bones actually do belong to the previous owners, is trying to keep Mirabelle happy (which isn't working, by the way), and questioning her neighbors (which isn't going over very well at all).  And if that isn't enough, her mother is developing Alzheimer's and Ashley and her sister Melanie must move Mama to a home to keep her safe, which only leaves Ashley with guilt feelings about it; and of course, that doesn't help the situation.

 

Along the way, she finds herself extremely attracted to the detective assigned to the case, Nick Yost, but knows that because of the investigation, anything that could develop needs to be put on hold temporarily.

 

Add a couple more murders, a definite dash of intrigue, and you have an interesting story which is enjoyable to read.  There are enough twists and turns to keep anyone interested, the characters are interesting in themselves, and I recommend this book for anyone looking for a nice cozy to read around Halloween.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Ghost-Ellen-Elizabeth-Hunter/dp/0373266936

 



Winner of Cloche and Dagger

The winner of Cloche and Dagger is Rania Hejjo.  Congrats and enjoy.  This next month I will be having a giveaway that is related to Halloween.  I'm not sure yet exactly what, whether it be a book, something related, etc.    Since I absolutely love the Carving Season, as I term it (first we carve pumpkins, then turkeys, then ham, and finally roast beef), I plan to have giveaways all through the rest of the year, and hope to make the Christmas one special for someone.

Book Giveaway

Well, tomorrow is the last day to enter my giveaway for a copy of Cloche and Dagger.  Next month I will be giving away a Halloween-themed book, although I don't know yet what type it will be (paranormal, ghosts, etc.)  You will have to check back to find out when it begins!

Scary Stuff

Author:  Sharon Fiffer
Genre:  Mystery

3 Stars

Jane Wheel is an "antique picker."  She finds old stuff for people who want them and will pay lots of money to have them.  She does this part-time, the other part being an associate to an ex-cop-turned-private detective, Bruce Oh.

While visiting her brother Michael for the first time in years, she finds out from him that people have him confused with someone who looks exactly like him - well, almost.  And that people think he conned them with selling fake stuff.  And are willing to do him some harm because of it.  And that the real con man, whoever he is, lives very close to Jane herself.  So, she has decided that when she goes back home, she will locate the duplicate and tell him to stop selling junk.

Only it doesn't work out that way.  While trying to find out who the con man, Honest Joe, really is, she finds out a lot of other things.  Things about her family that she never knew.  Relatives her mother, Nellie, never told her about.  And someone is willing to kill to make sure that she never finds out the truth.  So, while Jane and her friend Tim prepare a friend's home for a sale, they notice things just Aren't What They Are Supposed to Be.  And things only go downhill from there.

This book started out okay, but I just really couldn't get all that interested in it.  Jane is supposed to be an "antique picker," as I stated, but I think the better term would be "hoarder."  They do television shows about people like her.  People who keep safety pins because "they're pretty."  People who collect old dog dishes.  People who have floor-to-ceiling boxes of junk.  Which are junk, since she doesn't do anything with them except collect them.  Don't get me wrong; everyone collects something.  I collect things.  But only one or two things.  Not dozens of things.  And you can walk through my house without thinking you'll be buried alive.  From the description of Jane's personal space, a good earthquake and you'll never find the body.  I could be wrong, but my own opinion.  That alone bothered me, because I hate clutter.

I also thought it was odd that her husband, an archaeologist (I think, since she didn't mention him a lot), spends weeks, sometimes months, out of the country and she's okay with this.  Maybe it works for her; but I think if I were married to an archaeologist, I would probably want to at least spend some time with him in his part of the world, so I would at least be able to build a close relationship with him.  I didn't feel there was any closeness between them, because her son Nick was with his dad, Charley; and she missed Nick, but Charley seemed like an afterthought.  I began to wonder why they were married at all.

I guess I just thought Jane Wheel is a strange duck:  a hoarder in a long-distance relationship that she could just go about doing whatever it was she did without having to worry about another human being.  You want to like the main character, or at least have sympathy for them, but I did neither.  She didn't really think ahead, just plunged into situations.

The mystery itself could have been better, since the situations seemed a little off-the-wall.  When the killer was finally revealed, you would have thought that before acting, they would have done a little more homework to make sure that what they were planning would have worked out.  It just didn't make any sense.  If you've read the book, you'll know what I'm talking about. 

http://www.amazon.com/Scary-Stuff-Jane-Wheel-Mysteries/dp/0312387784



Last Wool and Testament

Author:  Molly MacRae
Genre:  Mystery

5 Stars

 

Kath McClellan has just arrived in Blue Plum, Tennessee for the funeral of her beloved grandmother, Ivy.  Ivy owned a fiber and fabric shop named The Weaver's Cat.  The shop, along with Ivy's house, were bequeathed to Kath upon her grandmother's death.  Only Kath soon finds out that there is a problem: the house isn't hers.  Ivy deeded it to Emmett, a shady character in Blue Plum that nobody liked.  But Emmett is dead, murdered; and Cole Dunbar, Deputy, has suggested to Kath that her grandmother poisoned him.  What's worse, the house has passed on to Emmett's son Max, and he has changed the locks so that Kath can't retrieve any of her grandmother's belongings; which she needs to do soon, because Max is renting the house out in a few days.

 

None of this, of course, makes any sense to Kath, and when she goes to her grandmother's attorney, Homer, to find out about it, he knows nothing about the house being transferred.  His advice is sound: let him handle it.  After all, he was her grandmother's attorney, and he can find out information better than she can.

 

She agrees, yet still wants to know what happened, and why.  So, she sets out to do some sleuthing on her own.  With no place to go, she is offered temporary housing by Homer's wife Ruth, and finds that she has unexpected help:  the ghost-in-residence that she (nor anyone else) knew lived in the cottage.  The only downside to this is that she is the only one who can see and hear the ghost.

 

The members of TGIF - Thank Goodness It's Fiber - are a group of fiber and needlework artists who meet regularly at her grandmother's (now hers) shop, and they are a colorful group of women.  They stand friend to Kath as they did to her grandmother, and are willing to help her any way they can.  There is Cole Dunbar, the deputy, who rubs Kath the wrong way and sees her as just an extension of "Crazy Ivy," her grandmother; and Cole's brother Joe, whom Kath at first mistakes for a burglar and only later finds out isn't, yet still has a hard time trusting.

 

I truly enjoyed this book, and liked the morose ghost, Geneva.  She had a personality all her own that was different, to say the least.  This was a ghost who loved television, which was a different twist on things.  Quite humorous at times.

 

When the actual murderer was discovered, I had no clue.  Indeed, there were no clues as to the identity.  That, in itself, made it worth reading.  I hate it when you read a book and you can figure out who the killer is within the first fifty pages or so.  Not with this one, and that's a good thing.

 

There were times when I was angry, as was Kath; and I feel that if a book can actually make me care, then it is a good book.  Too often you read a book and even though you like it, you don't find yourself feeling a lot of emotion with it.  Because of this, I'm looking forward to the next one involving Kath and her friends, and it can't be too soon for me.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Wool-Testament-Haunted-Mysteries/dp/045123782X

A Good Man Gone

Author:  A.W. Hartoin
Genre:  Mystery

4 Stars

 

Mercy Watts is a part-time nurse who also occasionally helps her father, Tommy Watts, on cases.  Tommy is a police detective-turned-private detective.  His former partner, Gavin Flouder, is found dead of a heart attack, but Tommy doesn't believe it.  Unfortunately, Mercy's father and mother are on a cruise, so he asks Mercy to check out what really happened, because he believes that Gavin was murdered.

 

Finding out her father's instincts are correct, she now has a new task:  Solve Gavin's murder for him.  Mercy is none too happy with her assignment, but agrees to do it.  However, she won't be doing it alone:  she'll have help from her "Uncle Morty," and Aaron, a restaurant owner with a voracious appetite who has been assigned the task of being her bodyguard.  She also has to make sure that her cousin, a police detective named Chuck Watts, doesn't get wind of what she's doing, since he's assigned to another murder case that may or may not be connected to Gavin's murder.

 

I was given a copy of this book in return for an honest review; and I always give honest reviews, whether they be good or bad.  Which isn't to say this was bad.  In fact, it was a very good mystery, which wove the details of both murder cases in and out like a tapestry.  It was an interesting read, and Aaron was a hoot.

 

But, oh, Mercy, Mercy me...I had to take away one star because of her.  I found Mercy herself over the top.  Supposedly, she looks so much like Marilyn Monroe that she has stalkers.  Why she has stalkers is kind of odd - some pictures showed up on YouTube, and now men are following her around and it just Didn't Make Any Sense To Me.  Why?  Well, an example:  she's jogging through an airport and one man drops his briefcase because he's staring at her boobs (as the author repeatedly refers to them), and another's wife hits him in the back of the head.  Really?  I live in Las Vegas, and there are beautiful women going in and out of our airports daily.  Never once have I seen a man do either of these things.  And a lot of these women are not what I would call 'dressed.'  They're wearing tiny tanks and shorts, yet I've never any man act that way around them.  Most men I know are educated enough NOT to stare at my or any other woman's boobs, no matter how much she resembles an actress, deceased or not (and we have our share of impersonators, too).  I was beginning to wonder if Mercy was walking around with see-through clothing and no underwear, because I just couldn't understand the idea of men acting this way.  It kind of makes one never want to go to Missouri, just in case, if you get my drift.   One man even makes an obscene gesture - which seems odd if they weren't porn photos, because if they were just of a beautiful woman, I don't believe a man would just do something like that.  They were also leaving messages and heavy breathing on her phone.  What exactly WAS on YouTube?  Then, they start harassing her mother, because she looks even MORE like Marilyn. I can find no rational reason that these men should be harassing Mercy or her mother for photos, not to mention how disrespectful it is to all women (no, I'm not a feminist, but I expect to be treated with respect), and I'm sure a good attorney could find a way around it (where is Perry Mason when you need him?)  And, in my opinion, it only detracted from the mystery.  I didn't see how she could conduct her own murder investigation if she was continually being followed by men. 

 

Anyway, my own suggestion is, if this series is continued, tone down Mercy with the stalkers just a tad and let the book stand on its own merits.  Believe me, it just might be interesting enough to see if it could.

 

 

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Mercy-Watts-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B00D1CPG5I



What Makes You...

...want to finish or not finish a book?  I have wondered that before, and again now recently, because after buying a book, I've had to literally slog through it to finish, which I only did by 'cheating' and looking at the final pages.  Even then, I wondered why I bothered and lamented the loss of money I could have spent on another, more satisfying one.

I love books, and will often take a chance on most of them, even if I haven't heard of the author or don't usually read the genre.  After all, you can always open your horizons to new things; and hey, a book's a book.  But when you have to force yourself to finish - which you know is happening because you suddenly wonder what you're going to make for dinner or if you're just going to order in - then the book really isn't captivating your interest, is it?

To be fair to everyone, I'm not naming the book.  Because everyone likes different books, and it wouldn't be fair to the reader nor to the author.  Because maybe they've written other books that are better than this one.  I know that we all see books differently - which is as it should be.  We're all going to have different reactions to them.  Yet I still find it hard to believe that a book can get such glowing reviews by others, and I can get halfway through and think, "who buys this pap?" or "are you kidding me?"  Books that you can't review because in all fairness, you really didn't finish it.  You 'peeked' to see the ending, because you got tired of rolling your eyes at every other passage (well, at least my eyes were getting exercise while I was reading!)

So, that being said, do you finish the book because you bought it?  Do you feel because you started you might as well continue to read?  Or, like me, do you peek to the end and just cut your losses, as it were?  And when you finally put the book down, do you immediately take a chance on a new or unknown author, or do you go to someone you're familiar with, someone you know, a book that you're truly going to savor and enjoy?