Cozy Mystery and Misc. Short Reviews

Cozy mysteries are to real mystery what bodice ripper romance is to love stories, or what pablum is to real food – a formula book that gets SO formula, you know the whole plot in 30 pages or less.  Many cozy writers think it’s OK to bore their readers to death reusing old dialogue, recycling plots (theirs and other writers, even straight from TV), and telling basically the same story again and again.  God knows Janet Evanovich has made a fortune doing it and hasn’t had a quality book since Seven Up and she’s about to publish book Twenty-Two.

Then something like the Mall Cop books by Laura DiSilvero comes along and gives me hope for the genre ……….. and it dies after 3 entries.  Honestly, would someone explain why those moronic books get published and quality authors get relegated to oblivion?  And why do authors think anything that works the first time, or two or three times, will work IN EVERY DAMN BOOK THEY WRITE?  Believe it or not, I WANT a different kind of ending.  Something original, not something that is stupid beyond understanding, or so preposterous that I’m rolling my eyes.  Something that is …… well, within REALITY.  I realize the endless parade of shop owners, cooks, chefs, librarians, and little old busybodies have this unique ability to solve crimes that baffle the cops, but PLEASE, give me a least a hope of enjoying the story instead of composing scathing comments about characters in my head till I can no longer read another word with out destroying the book – or trying to set myself on fire.

Yup, it’s been a rough run of cozies.  So here we go, fasten your seatbelt, we’re in for a bumpy ride.

Way to start the new year, with a cozy by a quality author, Lorraine Bartlett, With Baited Breath – a nearly unforgivable play on words that has cause hundreds, if not thousands, of people to think that’s how that phrase is spelled.  This was hands down the single most boring, amateurish book I read in January and might possibly hold that title for all of 2015.  It gets an astonishing 4.5* on Amazon.  WHY?  It was so dull I was half way through and prayed for death – preferably of the entire cast of characters.  And yeah, the ending really was that obvious.  Please, SAVE YOURSELVES and skip this one (and any additional books in this series).  D+ to C- (2.5*) and seriously consider a different book, unless you really NEED a nap.

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The latest installment of the Tara Holloway series by Diane Kelly felt and read like a pastiche of her previous books with the same ending, Tara saving the day with her sharp shooting skills.  It’s getting kind of old.  Death, Taxes, and Cheap Sunglasses takes us back to the drug cartels and puts boyfriend Nick under cover with her best friend Christina from the DEA on possibly the slimmest premise ever suggested.  Naturally, Tara overhears the plans, go nuts in a most unprofessional and girly way and generally behaves like a jerk.  They go undercover anyway and Tara gets busy with her own cases, which tend to go sideways in unpredictable ways.

While the book has the usual dose of humor, the sort of inevitable ending is getting on my nerves, as does her inability to trust others are as competent as she is.  This what, the third time she’s saved Christina?  Is the DEA agent really that bad?  For all these reasons, I give the 8th outing for Tara a C+ to B- (3.5*) and a very tentative suggested read.  This is book 8 in a series, but each book can be read as a stand alone.

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Horse of a Different Killer is book 3 in the Call of the Wilde series by Laura Morrigan and one of the best I read so far this year.  Which isn’t really saying much, but it was a decent read.   Like many cozies these days, she has a paranormal twist – in this case a psychic vet who works as an ‘animal behaviorist’.  At least her involvement in murders is somewhat more plausible than that of your average shopkeeper.  The writing style is good, mature, and reads well.  Characters are well developed, even though most are rather ‘TV series stock characters’.  Horse of a Different Killer gets a B- (3.8*) from me and a suggested read for cozy lovers.

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OK, I REALLY want to say nice things about this book, but …………… damn.  It is well written, sort of.  The lead character is OK, in a lame in 2 dimensional way.  But the premise?  Nope, sooooo does not work for me.  A Wee Murder in My Shop adds not another ghost, but … OK, he IS a ghost of a 600 year old Highlander – who oddly enough speaks modern English, a major shock to me.  Not only is he a ghost, our heroine Peggy Winn is a dead ringer for his late love.  Seems that shawl she found had magic.  (Of course it did!  We’re lucky the cast of Brigadoon didn’t fly home with her and start putting on 2 shows daily in Vermont!)  So now Peggy apparently talks to thin air, has a cousin arrested for murder, and her ex-boyfriend whom she caught cheating just before leaving on her buying trip for her ScotShop, is now dead in her store.  See, another shopkeeper sleuth.  The lesson here is, never be a shop owner!  It causes dead bodies!!!!!!!

A Wee Murder in my Shop was at best an average effort.  Macbeth (yeah real original, huh?) is barely nonplussed by the modern world.  He it totally unbelievable.  Peggy is a cardboard cut out, and none of the characters have any real depth or credibility.  Just shallow, barely sketched in personalities.  It gets a C- (2.7*) and a suggestion to read a different series.

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Here we go again, another first book in a new series that ………… well, can’t quite decide what the hell it wants to be when it grows up.  Georgia Thornton is left at the alter by her commitment-phob police detective boyfriend.  She ends up kicked off the force, unemployed and suddenly starring in a reality TV show – Love or Money.  The catch is half the guys romancing her only want the prize money.  The half are really looking for love – which apparently now requires TV dating services.  Too bad her prospective beaus keep getting killed.

After #1 dies in a bungee jump from the Golden Gate (yeah, really), her detective ex, Paul Sanders, steps in under a fake name with a fake job and tries romancing for real.  A First Date With Death is a clever idea that didn’t quiet gel.  Georgia is by turns whiny and immature, and then insightful and adult.  It was annoying.  Paul needs a swift kick into maturity.  the guy who wins is barely a character at all.

The book has some very funny moments and showed a lot of promise, but just fell short when it came to character development (I got whiplash wondering which Georgia would show up – the adult of the whiny overaged teen) and in its plotting.  To be honest, I barely cared who did it by the end.  No thrills for me.

A First Date with Death gets a C- (2.7*) and read only if you will suspend your logic long enough to get through the book.  I see no clear way this character can become a series, so where it goes from here is anyone’s guess.

A Quick Review of Recent Paranormal/UF Reads

OK – I’ve been nursing my shoulder and reading and trying not to type too much or do other things that annoy my joints – which in the winter is pretty much everything. God, I HATE WINTER!  The chaos on Paperback Swap has only gotten worse and that’s proved a distraction as well.  What a complete charlie foxtrot that’s turned into and PBS management is completely, utterly, and aggressively tone deaf to the community. SIGH!

I’ve also been reading till my eyes want to bleed, too bad so much of it is forgettable junk.  Cozies are the pablum of the mystery world and I OD’ed on them.  I’d say 70% are just tripe, 25 % are so boring you want to kill yourself, and last 5% give you false hope that the genre will snap out of it and start writing the good stuff again.   The odds are marginally better with paranormal, but honestly, I swear I could script most book’s entire story after the first 20 pages.

So here we go, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the just plain BORING.

The Dragon Conspiracy is Book 2 in Lisa Shearin’s UF series set in modern, paranormal NYC.  A fun, though predictable read with a finale much too similar to book 1.  Lively dialogue saves it from complete banality. C+ (3.5*) and read if you like paint by numbers UF.

Bound by Flames continues the saga of Vlad (Dracula) and his love, Leila.  Honestly, how does one love a sadist?  No matter how I break this down, Vlad is a violent sociopath.  Yes, a vicious product of his times, but not exactly evolved in the years since.  The writing is blah, the characters 2 dimensional, the plot almost silly, and the ending inevitable.  Trite is a kind description.  Give it a miss despite the good Amazon reviews.  The readers have a much higher tolerance for shallow and unlikable than I do.  D+ (2.7*) and suggested skip.

Casually Cursed is the seemingly last installment in the Southern Witch series that started years ago as trade paperbacks, changed publishers and is now complete and in mass market paperback.  This series seemed to loop for a bit, but Kimberly Frost put together an excellent ending that makes me wish she’d put as much thought and originality in a few of the earlier installments.  The main story arcs all wrap up in a sprawling cast that crosses more than international borders.  Tammy Jo, Bryn, and the various other characters get their tales completed.  The series is good, if uneven in spots, but the ending was worth waiting for.  B (4*) and a strongly suggested read.

It seems to me Jayne Wells goes out of her way to think up at least one gratuitous, sexually gross scene in each book and by golly she has a gem in Deadly Spells.  It’s all so unnecessary to just disturb readers with these mental images.  It adds nothing to the plot and brings a ‘ICK!’ factor in that can detract substantially.  In book 3 of the Prospero’s War series, she does advance the over-arcing plot, but but inches not yards.  Frankly, I find her ‘gross out’ scenes so annoying, the remainder of the book was unsatisfying and dull to what became my hyper-critical eye.  I think this is a series I’ll be skipping over now on.  I want to give this book a D for that stupid ‘Hot Pocket’ thing, but it gets a C- (2.7*) as does have some other value, just not enough to redeem it.  If you enjoy being depressed, this is the series for you.

Foxglove Summer, latest installment in The Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovich, is kind of a Harry Dresden style UF, though Peter Grant is no wizard like Harry – yet.  He is learning some magical skills and is sent by his mentor to a bucolic town well away from London and his usual beat to investigate two missing children.   So Peter is off his patch, but some of his patch comes calling.  The basis of much of the books is the living, sentient embodiment of rivers and streams that appear as humans, and as such, they travel, to an extent.  Here, the two missing girls are actually complicated by fae, unpleasant and dangerous creatures.  Foxglove Summer is an entertaining read with humor and tension and an engaging lead character.  The series is a bit hard to get into, but improves with age.  Books can be read as stand-alones,  especially this one, which is more accessible than some.  The ending is a bit anti-climatic.  C+ to B- (3.6*) and suggested read.

Waistcoats and Weaponry is the latest YA book in the Steampunk Finishing School series by the witty Gail Carriger.  She has more to say about certain social factors here than usual, but mostly she sticks to her winning formula of tomboy Sophronia Temminick and her school mates, especially Sidheagh, Dimity, Soap, and Lord Felix Mersey.  Sophronia must go home for her older brother’s wedding ball, but Sidheagh has bigger problems, her pack is complete disarray and without an Alpha.  Her grandfather (who is a lead character in the Parasol Protectorate series) has killed his traitorous Beta and left his pack, arriving in England and fighting to take another pack by killing its mad Alpha.  Sophronie has no intention of allowing Sidheagh to go off alone and she and her friends quickly follow.  The tale is mostly about determined young adults banding together to help each other, with shades of class and race issues and a dash of romance that she Carriger doesn’t quite pull off.  Not up to the quality of others in the series as there is no underlying mystery, just a straight forward YA adventure.   C+ to B- and suggested read for YA fans and those who follow the series.  Carriger plans one last book to finish the series and then she concentrates on her Custard Protocol books, the sequel to the Parasol Protectorate.