Rosemary Harris's series about gardening sleuth Paula Holliday ("Dirty Business Mysteries") is a great read about some fun characters. Paula is very well realized as a former film tycoon (so to speak) coming to small-town Springfield, Connecticut to start her own gardening business -- planning and physically planting each customer's gardens. The author really knows her plants and garden layouts. She has said that she is part of the Philadelphia Flower Show team and spends a lot of time with that.
The character of Paula eminates quirky, plucky, and intelligent. When she ends up with a mummified body of an infant in the first in the series Pushing Up Daisies she ends up solving a very old disappearance/murder and a very fresh one, too. There seem to be some sparks flying between her and the police detective ("Mom") Michael O'Malley. This should be fun to follow in the continuation of the series.
Rosemary Harris is an Agatha and Anthony nominated author who is very active in Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America. She has been the driving force behind the Mystery PopTop Stage at two annual American Library Association conferences.
Pushing Up Daisies is followed by The Big Dirt Nap, Dead Head and her newest title Slugfest. You will enjoy this snappy reads!
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
If you like wacky mysteries, try Lisa Lutz and her series about the Spellmans. The whole family runs a detective agency but the only one who seems to be really detecting is oldest daughter Isabel. Older brother David has left the agency to become a lawyer; younger sister Rae is now off to college and has lost the taste of late night stakeouts. Isabel has a significant other, Henry, who is a police detective but in the latest in the series (#5), "Trail of the Spellmans" there are conflicts with he and Izzy -- mostly of her making. There are usually many small mysterie to solve, not least of them what are the other members of the family doing. So Izzy follows them, too. Humorous footnotes keep the story going while quirky characters (so unreal sometimes to be wholly believable) carry the plot along in earnest.
In this latest caper, Izzy discovers that Rae and her dad have nicknames for all the family members. Izzy is the Gopher. This is not pleasing to her.
When Henry's mother comes to visit, Izzy finds her more compatible than Henry. Until Gerty hooks up with Izzy's old nemesis Bernie. This is totally unacceptable!
Izzy finds that the detective agency is not only following a husband (from his wife's directive) but following the wife (from her brother's order). Just what is going on here? Izzy thinks she knows so she starts counter stakeouts to ferret out the truth.
The author Lisa Lutz uses the humor and outlandish situations to make a memorable mystery series fun, as well as fascinating. Give these books a try. The first in the series is "The Spellman Files", followed by "Curse of the Spellmans", "Revenge of the Spellmans" and "The Spellmans Strike Again."
In this latest caper, Izzy discovers that Rae and her dad have nicknames for all the family members. Izzy is the Gopher. This is not pleasing to her.
When Henry's mother comes to visit, Izzy finds her more compatible than Henry. Until Gerty hooks up with Izzy's old nemesis Bernie. This is totally unacceptable!
Izzy finds that the detective agency is not only following a husband (from his wife's directive) but following the wife (from her brother's order). Just what is going on here? Izzy thinks she knows so she starts counter stakeouts to ferret out the truth.
The author Lisa Lutz uses the humor and outlandish situations to make a memorable mystery series fun, as well as fascinating. Give these books a try. The first in the series is "The Spellman Files", followed by "Curse of the Spellmans", "Revenge of the Spellmans" and "The Spellmans Strike Again."
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Kik Lowenstein is a great amateur sleuth who gets into some really dangerous places. Author Joanna Campbell Slan has a winner of a series here. The first in the series was nominated for the Agatha Award. The "Scrap-n-Craft" series features Kiki who is a master at scrapbooking. Not only are the mysteries well plotted and intriguing, the scrapbooking hints are well appreciated.
The latest installment, read from a NetGalley ARC, is just as exciting as all the previous novels. Kiki is pitted against a murderer who is probably the one who killed her husband in "Paper, Scissors, Death". She gets into the middle of the action by having been present when the murder occurred. Trying to solve the mystery, keep her family safe, survive a visit from her wacky mother, and keep the romance alive with her policeman heartthrob is almost more than she can handle.
Watch for an unusual lamp -- think armadillo roadkill -- as well as a tangled plan to catch a killer. Kiki endures it all with her sense of humor and integrity intact. I do question, however, the very abrupt ending. I wanted to know more about how what happened with the scrapbooking store -- it was left rather as a cliff-hanger. So is this a literary method sure to fire our appetites for book number six?
The latest installment, read from a NetGalley ARC, is just as exciting as all the previous novels. Kiki is pitted against a murderer who is probably the one who killed her husband in "Paper, Scissors, Death". She gets into the middle of the action by having been present when the murder occurred. Trying to solve the mystery, keep her family safe, survive a visit from her wacky mother, and keep the romance alive with her policeman heartthrob is almost more than she can handle.
Watch for an unusual lamp -- think armadillo roadkill -- as well as a tangled plan to catch a killer. Kiki endures it all with her sense of humor and integrity intact. I do question, however, the very abrupt ending. I wanted to know more about how what happened with the scrapbooking store -- it was left rather as a cliff-hanger. So is this a literary method sure to fire our appetites for book number six?
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