24. Hand of Evil - J. A. Jance

#3 Ali Reynolds

audio read by Karen Ziemba

2007 Simon & Schuster Audioworks

9 unabridged discs (10. hrs)

384 pgs.

Finished

Murder Mystery

Goodreads Rating:  3.73

My Rating: 1/Didn't like it at all

Setting: Sedona, Arizona

1^st sentence/s:

My comments:  I couldn't wait until I'd finished this.  I didn't like the first one at all, either, so I don't know why I keep torturing myself with this series.  Perhaps because of the locale.  So what is it I don't like?  Ali.  Goody-goody Ali.  Her stupid blog. And the writing.  Every tiny detail is explained over and over. And people remember details of information from 40, 50 years previously.  Sure.  Also, so much more could be said about this lovely community and it's totally missing.  Blech! (I guess I really, really want to like these and I keep getting disappointed....)

Goodreads Review:  "When Arabella Ashcroft, a member of the family who gave Ali a generous scholarship for her education decades earlier, suddenly asks her for a meeting, Ali wonders what it can mean. Before she can satisfy her curiosity, though, Ali receives another startling call: a friend's teenage daughter has disappeared. Ali offers to help, but in doing so, she unknowingly begins a quest that will reveal a deadly ring of secrets, at the center of which stand two undiscriminating killers...."

29. Now You See Her - Cecelia Tishy

Regina Cutter series #1
for: adults
Mysterious Press/Time Warner, 2005
288 pages
3/5

Cecelia Tishy wrote a series of books about Kate Banning, then started in on this series about Regina Cutter. She published this in 2005, then All in One Piece in 2006, but I see nothing from her since. She doesn't seem to have a website and I find no information on her other than her books. A mystery!

Regina Cutter lives in Boston, is recently divorced after many years, has some minor psychic powers, and is trying to follow in her deceased aunt's clairvoyant/do-gooder/interesting friends footsteps. I love the Back Bay and Boston setting. Every character is a little off-the-wall, over-the-top (or it was the mood I was in while reading?), so much of the story seemed inplausible. Lots of coincidences. The Boston police must be pretty stupid if they couldn't figure out what she did, and she took a lot of chances in the middle of the night, which I can't imagine anyone in her position taking. A bit unbelievable.....but not enough to make me put the book aside.

Regina "Reggie" Cutter shares her inherited dog with a Harley-riding softee and is "helping" a Boston police detective by trying to use her (limited) psychic powers to free a wrongly accused black man who has been imprisoned for 13 years. She and that little dog are all over the city, either walking or driving her Beetle. She sticks her nose in everywhere, meets a variety of people by unbelievable coincidence, and gathers amazing clues by brashly being at the right place at the right time with the right excuses. She's one very lucky woman to come out of the whole mess with only a sprained ankle. Crooked politicians, nasty murders, disposing of chemical wastes illegally, your usual assortment of bad guys....and there you have it. The best "character" in the story was Boston itself!

50. Death Assemblage - Susan Cummins Miller

Frankie MacFarlane #1
Texas Tech Univ. Press, 2002
Rating: 3.5

Set in Pair-a-Dice, Nevada, a tiny "hick" town in the northern part of the state, our heroine, six-footer Frankie MacFarlane, is working on her graduate thesis in geology and smarting over a broken romance. She has nine lives, a huge curiosity, and is very nosy. There's a huge cast of characters, murders, break-ins, strangers, and an inordinate amount of clues that DO come together at the end. It's improbable, interesting, and a fun read. The suicide? accident? murder? of her ex sets up a future novel...

It's not a "polished" story - many clues and much information are introduced weakly, but it's the first in a series (even possibly her first book?) and it will be interesting to see if character development is better in future novels.