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HOT ON THE TRAIL
by Jane Isenberg
Avon Books, November 2004
336 pages
$6.99
ISBN: 0060577517


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Bel Barrett is teaching a memoir writing class to a group of senior citizens, which she is enjoying far more than she anticipated when she volunteered to teach the class as a way to get her possibly depressed mother involved in something. One of her students from another class wants her to investigate the death, deemed accidental or suicide by the police, of her father Dom Tomaselli, a student in the memoirs class. Bel is a woman of a certain age, and in the process of planning a wedding to her long-time suitor Sol.

Dom Tomaselli was a pigeon man; he was part of the Pigeon Service in the US Army's Signal Corps during the war, and raced pigeons with the Hoboken Racing Pigeon Club for many years. His daughter Flora Giglio doesn't believe her father fell of the roof (either accidentally or on purpose) where he tended his pigeons for years. Yes, he had been depressed but being in the class with Bel had really made a difference in that area. Flora is convinced her father was murdered. And she knows who did it -- her uncle Emilio, who owed Dom big time for bailing him out of a major gambling debt many years ago.

For reasons not really clear to me, Bel decides to investigate Dom's death. She turns up plenty of other people with motive. There is his son Leo, who stands to make a lot of money from some real estate deals that Dom wouldn't sign off on. There are other members of the Hoboken Racing Pigeon Club, with the same motive that Leo has. There is even Flora, who has the same financial motive as well as a new-found freedom now that Dom isn't living with her, and the psychological burden of having Dom to care for/about is lifted with his death.

Of course Bel has more going on in her life than the death of Dom. Her wedding to long-time beau Sol Hecht keeps being put on the back burner because there is always something else less challenging to work on than a guest list or setting an actual date for the ceremony or finding a place for the wedding or figuring out how to pay for the wedding.

Her mother (Ma) and Sofia, mom's tenant/friend, make demands upon Bel's time and attention. Their gambling excursions to Atlantic City are a cause for mild concern. And we get to hear a lot more about Bel's hot flashes and stress urinary incontinence than I, personally, need or want to know.

I didn't particularly care for HOT ON THE TRAIL. I didn't buy into the reasons Bel was investigating Dom's death. I got tired of hearing about Bel whining, about Bel's hot flashes and stress incontinence, about all the reasons her wedding wasn't getting planned. The plot wasn't bad; the supporting cast was good, the writing was sufficient unto the day. Not having read any of the others, I can't say if this is just a weak spot in the series or typical of Isenberg's work.

This is book six or seven in the series; I wouldn't recommend starting with this one. If you liked the others , and this is not up to Isenberg's usual standards, then cut her some slack; every writer is entitled to a mediocre book once in a while. If this is typical of Isenberg's work, and you like it, then you won't be disappointed. It didn't grab me.

Reviewed by P. J. Coldren, October 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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