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Gretchen Birch receives a frantic phone call in the early hours of the morning from her aunt in Arizona. She is told that her mother, Caroline, has gone missing and one of the neighbours has been found dead on the hill behind her mother's house. Thinking that her aunt Nina's tendency to exaggerate and be dramatic might be at the bottom of this "crisis" she heads to Arizona anyway, to find out why her aunt is so worried. When she gets to her mother's house, Gretchen soon realises something is really wrong, especially when she finds that the only thing missing out of all of Caroline's personal belongings appears to be her car - even her toothbrush is still in the bathroom!
What follows is a race to find out what really happened to the neighbour, Martha, who police now believe was murdered and as Caroline has become the chief suspect due to what appears to be an incriminating note found in Martha's hand, time is running out.
This story is really interesting in many ways. It takes the reader on a journey into the world of the doll trade and provides some great insight into the restoration, buying, selling and collecting of antique dolls of all kinds. The murder victim was obsessed with dolls which were like children to her. She once had a extensive and highly valuable collection, but, due to her inability to stop buying more and more expensive pieces, she got in trouble with the bank and lost her home, her collection and ultimately became an alcoholic vagrant living on the streets with other people down on their luck.
In spite of the story being quite suspenseful and there being several possible suspects, it lost a little of it's appeal to me because of the numerous spelling and grammar mistakes throughout. The story would have really benefitted from another edit. As far as the quality of the mystery goes, I had the culprit figured out about 60% of the way through but it was an interesting read, none-the-less.
If you like a fairly decent murder mystery and are interested or would like to know more about the world of dolls, then this is the book for you.
9/10
Paw and Order is the 7th book in the Chet and Bernie Mystery series. As usual, Chet the dog is the narrator and his ideas and thoughts are often laugh-out-loud funny.
On this occasion Chet and Bernie find themselves in Washington DC, visiting Suzie Sanchez, who is Bernie's on-off girlfriend. She is now a reporter for the Washington Post and has picked up a keen interest in politics. She stumbles across a source for a story she wants to write about the upcoming elections and steps right into a murder. Chet and Bernie get involved as Bernie becomes a suspect in the crime. So their adventures begin!
I adore Chet the dog. He is funny, smart and gets side-tracked by things like food smells, squirrels, cats and loss of train of thought, but he always gets "the perp". Bernie is a loveable character, too, and the two are inseparable and work as partners in the Little Detective Agency which is based in Arizona.
If you want a different kind of detective/crime novel, filled with humour and narrated from an unusual perspective, then these books are the thing to pick up. Without fail each one has been an interesting adventure filled with all kinds of likable characters and Spencer Quinn makes Chet the dog's voice so realistic that I often find myself forgetting that he is a dog, that is, until he sees a squirrel!
Paw and Order goes on sale on August 5th. Be sure to get a copy, you won't regret it!
9.7/10
Oh dear! This is the third book I have given up on this year which equals the same amount of abandoned books I had in the whole of 2013!
Why? I ask myself. Especially as I do so hate to give up on book!
Well, I have a theory.........
About this time last year I began to include books in my TBR pile which I would not previously have put in there. After having a couple of unexpected successes in the types of genre which include more light hearted, comedic murder mysteries/detectives and more witchy/magic type stuff I have now come to the conclusion that these kinds of books are more difficult to get right and their fans have limitations and differentiations. Humorous stories/thrillers, vampire-y/witchy types have to be very much to a person's taste and as a result not everyone will get along with them all as easily as say a fairly straight forward, light romance which follows a straightforward path to the end. And this is the case with this book.
A Mission to Murder had a 4.43 star rating on Goodreads when I was deciding to buy it or not, so I thought I would give it a go having had great experiences reading fairly similar books by authors like Jana Deleon and Liliana Hart, within the last few months. However, I just couldn't get into the voice of Lynn Cahoon. The basic story has potential but the main protagonist really annoyed me and why on earth her boyfriend was so patient with her, I have no idea. I persevered with it until 32% in on my kindle and then gave up, quoting to myself my new mantra of: "There are too many other books out there I would enjoy reading more than this"
I am not saying it is a bad book or badly written - who am I to criticise, after all! I am just saying that it wasn't for me.
No point rating as didn't finish!
