★★★★★ Interestingly dark! When Aristide Leonides dies suddenly in his mansion located just outside of London, the police are called in to investigate the suspicious death. They soon learn that the death was not natural - Aristide, a rich businessman married to a woman 50 years his junior and surrounded by his seemingly loving family,... Continue Reading →
★★★ 1/2 This is the third installment in the Maggie Nolan series and I would highly recommend that you read the series in order if at all possible. We are far enough into the series now that the back stories of the recurring characters have been well developed and their motivations explained in previous books.... Continue Reading →
★★★★ This second installment in the series finds Detective Maggie Nolan investigating the unusual death of a man found in Swan Lake, the pond at the exclusive Bel-Air hotel. Interestingly, it is Maggie herself who finds the body after finally deciding to have a cocktail with her homicide colleague, Remy Boudreau. The initial assumption is... Continue Reading →
★★★ 1/2 I started this series because I enjoyed P.J. Tracy's Monkeewrench series so much. In that series, the location of Minneapolis, MN is written like another character in the book. P.J. Tracy does it again in the Margaret Nolan series with Los Angeles, CA filling that role in this series. Another trademark is the... Continue Reading →
★★ 1/2 I love to binge series so I was hopeful that this one might be the start of something wonderful but unfortunately, it's on my "just okay" list. The story is told largely from the point of view of Lindsay Boxer, a homicide inspector in the San Francisco police department. Lindsay and her partner... Continue Reading →
Instead of writing a review for each of the 10 books in this series that have been published so far, I decided to write a review for book #5 that will reference each of the first 5 books and then a review for book #10 that will speak to the next 5 books. This series... Continue Reading →
★★★ This book is an odd mix of dark comedy, cozy mystery and generational family relationship drama with a dash of romance thrown in. Because of this, I felt that the book tried to be too many things and story continuity often suffered as a result. On the positive side, I found myself laughing out... Continue Reading →
★★ I actually was enjoying this one and thinking that while it wasn't going to be my favourite Christie, it was probably going to end up being a solid 3 star read for me. Poirot didn't appear in any significant way until about halfway through the book. This was definitely not his finest showing -... Continue Reading →
★★ Victorian-era spiritualism, ghosts and murder on All Hallows Eve! I was hooked as soon as I saw the synopsis of the book and thought it would be a great read for the Hallowe'en season. Unfortunately, the story didn't quite work for me. To be clear, it's not a terrible book but the early promise... Continue Reading →
★★★★★ Why did I wait so long to pull this one off of my TBR shelf?! I purchased it at Powell's bookstore in Portland, OR. My husband and I lived there for almost 2 years after I was transferred for work and our condo was within walking distance of Powell's - great for us but... Continue Reading →
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