Review: Miss Julia Delivers the Goods

Author: Ann B. Ross
Format: 8 discs (10 hrs, approx) 352 page equivalent
Characters: Julia Springer Murdock, Hazel Marie, Mr. Pickens, Lillian
Setting: any small town in North Carolina
Series: Miss Julia
Genre: cozy mystery
Source: public library
Challenge: audio books, support your local library


Miss Julia is always good for a dose of Southern charm, manners, and lessons on the proper way for a lady to comport herself and butt into everybody's business.  In this episode, Miss Hazel Marie finds herself "in the family way" without benefit of the propriety of matrimony.  Miss HM has sent Mr. Pickens (her erstwhile suitor) packing, and refuses to have anything to do with him, or to tell him of his impending fatherhood.  Oh, and Miss Julia has to help Sam, the police, and Mr. Pickens the private detective find out who broke into Sam's office and stole the papers he had for the book he was writing.

She is concerned, naturally, about Hazel Marie's reputation in this small town, but HM swears Miss Julia to secrecy.  The zany schemes concocted by Hazel Marie, Miss Julia, and the long-suffering maid Lillian, for keeping her 'condition' hidden from the busybodies, and how and what she is going to explain to her son Lloyd, are quite entertaining.  The author could have probably chopped 50 pages out of this one without losing anything.  Reading this is like eating fudge....one piece is delicious, two is great, but by the time you get to the third piece, you realize you've had about enough.  Miss Julia's interference in everyone's life, and Hazel Marie's over-the-top performance as the put-upon (can you say "Woe is ME"?) southern belle got to be a bit much toward the end.  If you're a fan of southern cozies, this is one for you.  If you prefer your tea unsweetened, this one may need several slices of lemon to tame it.

Review: Ghost at Work

Author: Carolyn Hart
Narrator: Ann Marie Lee
Format: 8 discs (10.75 hrs)- 336 page equivalent
Characters: Bailey Ruth Raeburn, Kathleen Abbott, Sheriff Cobb, assorted good and bad guys
Subject: Murder in a small town
Setting: Adelaide Oklahoma 
Series: Bailey Ruth Mysteries #1
Genre: Cozy mystery
Source: Overdrive download from public library
Challenge: Support your Public Library, Thrillers and Suspense, Audio Books


A pleasant cozy. Bailey Ruth Raeburn has already died and gone to heaven. After a while of almost boring wonderfulness, she enlists in the heavenly rescue squad to return to earth and help people in trouble. Her first assignment is to go back to her hometown of Adelaide Oklahoma to help her grand niece Kathleen Abbott who is afraid she or her husband, the rector at St. Mildred's episcopal, will be accused of murder. After all, there is a dead body on the back porch of the rectory.

Bailey Ruth didn't have time for training in heaven before she undertook this assignment. Her continual violation of the "heavenly precepts for emissaries" lands her in hot water with her heavenly mentor Wiggins as she tries to intercept evidence, interview suspects, and find out who dunnit while keeping herself invisible. Her appetite for good home cooking keeps getting in the way, and her need to help constantly has objects flying through (or suspended in) the air as she whizzes, whisps, and zooms from spot a to spot b, all the while forgetting that while she may be invisible the bag of evidence she's just scooped up isn't. Neither can the corporeal objects melt through solid walls or doors. Her antics to overcome these difficulties are truly amusing.

All in all, Hart presents us with an endearing character, a solid plot, lots of good suspects, and a fairly surprise ending. I'll be looking for another of these to see if Bailey Ruth can learn how to do this job in a more efficient manner and whether she'll be able to get off probation and become a full-fledged emissary. 

Review: Death Goes on Retreat

Author: Sr. Carol Anne O'Marie
Format: audio 8 discs, approx 9 hrs.
Characters: Sr. Mary Helen, Sr. Eileen, Kate Murphy,
Subject:  murder
Setting: Santa Cruz CA
Series:Sister Mary Helen Mysteries
Genre:cozy mystery
Source: public library


Another cozy featuring the detecting nun, Sr. Mary Helen and her sidekick Sr. Eileen. This time the sisters get their calendar mixed up and show up a week early in Santa Cruz for a nuns retreat only to find that the place is full of priests who are supposed to be on retreat. After an encounter with an absolutely obnoxious cook who seems to hold the whole place hostage to her schedule, Sr. MH finds a body, the police show up, and the fun begins. The author presents the murderer early on, and keeps providing broad hints, but also goes to great lengths to prove that it cannot be this person. San Francisco detective Kate Murphy, from the dear sisters' home area, gets roped into helping. After a second death Sr. Felicita, the meek mousy lady in charge of the retreat center finds a backbone, the local detective (with help from Sr. MH of course) solves the mystery, and Sr. gives her sermonette on life to the reader.

This is the 2nd one of the series I've read, and while they're fun, they're a bit light, and this one was quite preachy. Still, an acceptable who-dunnit.




Challenges: Audio Books, Thrillers-Suspense-Mysteries, Support Your Local Library

Christmas Challenge: Review- Silent Nights by Anne Perry

Another Christmas book for my challenge.  This one actually consisted of two separate 'novellas' each featuring one of Perry's secondary characters from her William Monk and Charlotte Pitt series.

The first, A Christmas Beginning, features Superintendant Runcorn from Perry's William Monk series.  We see Runcorn arriving on a bleak island off the coast of Wales to spend his Christmas holiday.  There he discovers the secret love of his life whom he met working a case  in London, and further discovers a dead body in the Church yard shortly after his arrival.  In very UN-Runcorn fashion, he treads delicately with the local constable as he helps solve the murder.  There was a completely unexpected ending (in the very last sentence of the story) that really blew me away.  I enjoyed getting to know Runcorn better--I've been a fan of the Monk series for years, and feel I know him better now that this case is finished.  It will be interesting to see if Perry takes these personality developments further in future books in the Monk series.

The second story, A Christmas Grace was a real stretch.  It has Emily Radley (sister of Charlotte Pitt- another of Anne Perry's series) spending her Christmas in very rural Ireland, nursing her dying aunt from whom the entire family has been estranged for years.  I found this story awkward, with the characters very cardboard, and the plot really contrived.  I had to force myself to finish it because frankly, it just wasn't very interesting...

I like Anne Perry's works, but the Christmas stories (I've read 3 now) seem to be quickies thrown together without a lot of thought. I'll try one more next year, but after that, we'll see............

Amateur female sleuths

Thanks to my sister Cheli (she of Cheli's Shelves) --aka Queen of the Cozies, I seem to be picking up quite a few 'cozies' featuring amateur detectives who happen to be female. While I can't handle a steady diet of cozies, I think of them as treats to 'cleanse the pallet' between doses of hefty, heavy, depressing, or horrifying reads. The cozy mystery always has a lovable, almost huggable hero or heroine, a plot that's relatively easy on the brain cells, settings that inspire (in fact I've often thought as I finish one of these that I'd love to visit the scene), and believable, almost happily-ever-after endings.

Here are a few that have tickled my fancy in the past few months:

Sr. Mary Helen in...........

A Novena for Murder

by Sister Carol Anne O'Marie

 A sweet and sassy cozy written by a nun featuring a 70 year old nun as the amateur sleuth.  Sent  against her wishes to her alma mater to "retire,' Sr. Mary Helen finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation, helping a former student who is now a San Francisco police detective find out the who and why.

I went to a school exactly like Mt. St Francis (mine was Mt St Agnes) and our dear Auntie whom you've heard me speak of so fondly lived right where this is set, so I could really relate to this.  Besides, some of the main suspects (and the victim) were Portuguese, so this was a no-brainer for me to pick up and read.  It's not Nobel Prize lit, but it's fun. A nice afternoon's read--perfect for the fog and rain of the San Francisco setting.
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 Dead Cat Bounce

by Sarah Graves

"Home Repair is Homicide" Series

This was originally slotted to be a group read by our Read Around Maine group, but that group seems to have dissolved. I decided to read it when I needed something less cerebral than some of the other books on my list. It was actually a delightful little mystery, set in small town Maine, capturing the flavor of the town, the culture of those living by the sea and making their living from the sea. Jacobia Triptee lives in a falling down Victorian house which she is remodeling, has an ex-husband who is the proverbial jerk, and a teenage son trying to adjust to living in a small town after having lived in a big city.

When the dead body shows up in the pantry, and her friend confesses to the murder, Jake sets out to prove her friend innocent. There are several suspects, and the plot is convoluted enough to make it really interesting. This was the first in the "Home Repair is Homicide Series" and I'll definitely look for more.
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Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon
by Nancy Atherton

I've read several Aunt Dimity stories before, and enjoy them alot. I've just started this one and suspect that it will be neither more or less pleasant than those before it.  Lori Shepherd, the mother of twins, moves to a tiny village in the Cottswolds, and there makes the acquaintance of "aunt Dimity" --actually a haunted journal who ''writes" to Lori explaining and/or giving clues to the mystery du jour.  The stories are almost non-sensical, but the sense of whimsey and the pleasant English countryside setting redeems them.