THE GIRL WITH THE DACHSHUND TATTOO - Sparkle Abbey [Book recommendation]

Book obtained from: Library New Books shelf, Large Print edition

Description: Mel, the protagonist, owns a doggie boutique shop, and she operates a booth at a regional dachshund race called the Dachshund Dash. Before the big race starts, one of the dog owners is found dead and Mel's assistant is the prime suspect. Mel investigates the killing to clear her assistant's name.

Plot: Mel tries to clear her assistant's name by interviewing dog owners, race officials, and other folks. Her fiance is an FBI agent and he's at the race, too, but he won't tell her why. Mel uncovers cheating, doping, gambling, and other activities at the doggie racetrack.

Characterization: The characters are reasonably well developed and had their own personalities. Betty, Mel's assistant, is pretty wild and crazy and fun to read about.

Setting: Beach town of Laguna Beach California, which isn't too far from where I live. The descriptions were good, I was able to picture every scene without it being over-described.

Other: This is the sixth book in the series. The books alternate between Mel and her cousin Caro as the protagonist. I haven't read any other books in the series, but I was able to follow along and understand the story.

Overall: A good, light mystery. Funny. I would read more by this author.

Grade: B+

MURDER COMES CALLING - CS Challinor [Book recommendation]

Book obtained from: Library “new books” shelf

Description: Four murders take place in a secluded English village. All four victims were selling their houses at the time of their deaths, so at first the police suspect the house [real estate] agent. Scottish barrister Rex Graves is called on by an old friend to help solve the puzzle.

Plot: This is a murder mystery set in a small community in England. Solving the mystery requires the MC to delve into the happenings of the past. It's compared to Agatha Christie, and that comparison is mostly accurate, altho this story has fewer characters to keep track of than a typical Christie book, which made it easier to follow along.

Characterization: The characters are reasonably well-developed. The protagonist is a Scottish barrister [attorney] visiting an old friend in a small community in England. The old friend, a physician/pathologist, gets himself mixed up in the murders by finding the bodies.

Setting: Small community in England, late November through late December, so late fall / early winter. The descriptions were good, I was able to picture every scene without it being over-described.

Other: This is a small paperback of 200 pages, so it was a quick read.

Overall: A good English cozy mystery. I would read more by this author.

Grade: B+

MAN IN THE EMPTY SUIT - Sean Ferrell [Book recommendation]

Book obtained from: Library, audio book [2013]

Description: A time travel novel. The main character meets with “himselves” every year in an abandoned hotel in a futuristic dystopian NYC. The only people who come to the annual gathering are current, previous, and future versions of himself, except this year a woman shows up too. One of his future selves is murdered, and he must stop that from happening or everything will unravel.

Plot: This is a murder mystery but not really. Very difficult to explain. The MC has to prevent his own murder, while teaming up with some of his past and future selves and avoiding others. And find out who is the mysterious woman. This author has a seriously bizarre creative streak. The book is mind-bending. I like mysteries because I have to pay attention to try to figure them out, but this book required an extra measure of mental effort because of the time travel element. Very interesting.

Characterization: Most of the characters are the MC at various ages. He has nicknames for the various versions of himself, and each of the individual selves is reasonably well-developed and differentiated, which helps to keep them straight. The MC muses at times about how he has changed over his lifetime, which is an interesting bit of self-reflection. The third quarter of the book contained a POV change into the woman's POV for several chapters, which I didn't realize until quite a bit into it and it threw me for a while until the POV changed back to the MC.

Setting: April in New York City in a dystopian future. The descriptions were good, I was able to picture every scene without it being over-described.

Other: There are a few sex scenes, and all but one zipped by me and only after they were finished did I realize what they were. The book has chapters but they are not numbered. The narrator for this audio book has an interesting, somewhat monotone voice which actually helped with the characterization of the MC.

Overall: I enjoyed this book but it did require a bit of work. I would read more by this author, altho I need a break between books to let my brain relax.

Grade: B

LIFE'S A BEACH, THEN YOU DIE - Falafel Jones [Book recommendation]

Book obtained from: Amazon, free Kindle book [2013]

Description: Max Fried and his wife retire to New Smyrna Beach, Florida [east of Orlando]. Max was a computer forensic examiner before he retired. He meets an attorney who asks him to help find the assets of a deceased client. Max searches the client's computer, but finds more than he bargained for when everyone who knows what Max has discovered, ends up dead, and now the killer is after him.

Plot: Max obtains the deceased client's computer and finds bank info, emails, etc. Quite a bit of description of how to break into someone's computer. In fact, lots of techno info in this story. Someone, presumably the killer, tosses Max's house, spies on him, and assaults him, looking for something. Near the end of the book, Max figures out what the killer is looking for, which leads him to figuring out who the killer is. A bit of humor, a light read.

Characterization: The characters are reasonably developed and had their own personalities. Most characters were described in a similar fashion, height, weight, hair color, etc. Would have been good for a little variety in descriptions.

Setting: Beach town of New Smyrna Beach, Florida. The descriptions were good, I was able to picture every scene without it being over-described.

Other: This appears to be a self-published book, and did need a better editor [a few typos and grammar issues, not too many but sometimes distracting]. But the quality of the story was equal to many traditionally published books, in my opinion.

Overall: A good, light mystery. Funny in places. I would read more by this author.

Grade: B+

DUCK THE HALLS - Donna Andrews [Book recommendation]

Book obtained from: Library, audio book [2013]

Description: The week before Christmas, someone is playing pranks on the churches [most denominations are included] of a small Virginia town, including placing a cage of skunks in the choir loft of one and several hundred ducks in the main sanctuary of another. Meg Langslow, the protagonist, has the task of helping all of the churches find alternate space to hold all their pre-Christmas activities. After a small fire at one church, someone is found murdered.

Plot: The main plot starts with Meg scheduling a church's activities at other churches' facilities, because the first prank leaves skunk stench permeating the entire church. All the churches in this small town are accommodating to their needy neighbors. As the number of churches “out of commission” grows, Megs job of creating the master schedule becomes complicated. Then after one prank, a fire in the basement of a church, the plot changes because a church elder is found dead near the fire. Meg doesn't necessarily “investigate” the murder, but in her efforts to schedule everything, she talks to lots of people regarding the pranks and the murder.

Characterization: The characters are reasonably developed and had their own personalities. Meg, the main character, might be a little “too good” in that she doesn't really have negative character traits. In fact, many of the people in the story are somewhat two-dimensional in that respect. Meg has 4yo twin sons. Each boy has his own personality, which was nice to see, but their language development was much younger than most of the 4yo boys I know. In fact, I was expecting a sub-plot on speech therapy. I would guess the boys had the speech skills of 2-1/2 to 3yo boys. Once I pictured them as early 3yo, their speech and roles became more believable.

Setting: Small town in Virginia. The descriptions were good, I was able to picture every scene. Some scenes were a tad over-described.

Other: The narrator was a good match for Meg's character. A good person, mild, easy-to-get-along-with. This book taught me what a “slow moving” story was like. Lots of description, possibly too much. Meg had quite a bit of interior thought throughout the story, which slowed it down a bit. At several points I almost stopped reading because there wasn't much action on the page. Some humor. Some of the chapter breaks were in strange places, like right in the middle of conversations but the end of one chapter didn't seem like a cliff-hanger, so it seemed odd to break the chapter there. Almost like “here's 12 pages, time for a new chapter” randomness.

Overall: A good holiday mystery, somewhat slow paced. I would read more by this author, but anything slower than this story I might stop reading.

Grade: B+

DEATH OF A LIAR - MC Beaton [Book Recommendation]

Book obtained from: Library “new books” shelf, large print edition

Description: Police Sergeant Hamish Macbeth investigates the report of an attack on a village woman. He soon discovers the woman was lying. Later, she reports another attack but Macbeth admonishes her to seek help for her compulsion to lie. The next day he finds her murdered. He investigates her murder, encountering other murders and illegal activity in the process.

Plot: This is a murder mystery set in the Scottish Highlands. Sub-plots include Macbeth's personal life filled with his dog and cat and disappointment with his love life, and his relationships with the constable who works for him and the other people in the village. The main plot of the murder investigations grew rather broad, with several new developments and a lot of suspects that sometimes made it a bit on the complicated side to try to keep everything straight.

Characterization: The characters are reasonably well-developed, altho this may be because I've read quite a few Hamish Macbeth mysteries already, but it did appear to me that if a reader was starting the series with this newest release, she would still have a good idea of the different personalities of Macbeth and the other regular characters.

Setting: Scottish Highlands. The descriptions were good, I was able to picture every scene without it being over-described.

Other: The main storyline was more complicated than most of the other Macbeth stories. I don't know that I would recommend a reader start with this book, which is probably number 30 in the series. Better to start with previous books and work your way up to this one.

Overall: A good Scottish cozy mystery, altho a bit on the complicated side. I would read more by this author [in fact, I've read a lot by this author].

Grade: B+

LUNATICS - Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel [Book Recommendation]

Book obtained from: Library, audio book [2012]

Description: Philip Horkman is a pet shop owner, family man, and kids' soccer referee. Jeffrey Peckerman is a forensic plumber [LOL yes I checked, it really is a profession] with an attitude. They have a “slight” disagreement which results in them being pursued by the police, terrorists, revolutionaries, bears, and assorted other bad guys.

Plot: The book is a farce - an exaggerated and improbable comedy. I've read all of Dave Barry's non-fiction, but this is my first time reading his fiction. After an initial disagreement at a kids' soccer game, the MCs [love those names] end up pursued by the police, mistaken for terrorists, and they either encounter or cause an escalating set of situations which get more and more improbable. Occasional chapters are television news reports and newspaper articles. The final situation is supposed to be the most improbable, but oddly it appears the authors did have a prophetic vision because one of the final improbabilities is actually historically accurate here in 2015. I imagine the authors had a WTF moment when that situation actually occurred.

Characterization: The characters are well-developed. Horkman is a true straight man, loves his family, good father, etc. Peckerman is wild and crazy, also a family man but makes you wonder about his sanity. Definitely reminiscent of the Odd Couple. They don't live together, but they end up relying on each other to get themselves out of their various predicaments.

Setting: South Florida and several other states and countries. The descriptions were good, I was able to picture every scene without it being over-described.

Other: The book is narrated by the authors, alternating telling the story from their character's point of view. Dave Barry used a lot of F-bombs, which was definitely in character but sometimes I thought was a bit much. It ended just when I was getting tired of the slapstick, so it was the perfect length, possibly one chapter too long. The end wrapped up all the loose ends in a very humorous way.

Overall: Laugh-out-loud funny. Sometimes a bit too over-the-top improbable. I would read more by these authors.

Grade: B+