|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
Jean Hastings and her daughter run a decorating business, but lately no one in their small town seems to need their expertise. When health diva Dona Deville inherits an old cottage and asks Jean to decorate it, Jean is interested, but she explains that she needs to walk through the house with Dona before she'll agree to take on the job. Dona is a busy woman, having just returned to town after being away for years, but she unhappily agrees to meet Jean. Jean takes Mary, her air-head sister-in-law with her to look at the house where they find Dona dead, murdered. Unfortunately Rollie Stevens, the police chief whose mind is on his imminent retirement, is in put in charge of the investigation, so Jean isn't too sure that the guilty party will actually ever be found. To make matters worse, she later finds out that her husband, Charlie, was hit in the knee on the golf course that morning and taken to the hospital for surgery. She soon finds out that it's almost impossible to connect with him, because every time she goes to visit he's either asleep or out of the room for some reason. Then Chief Rollie's wife, Martha a physical therapist, contacts Jean. She has a deal to offer. Martha says she will take care of Charlie and his physical therapy if Jean will investigate the case, mainly to keep Rollie out of trouble until his retirement. Since Jean would love to make sure the guilty party is discovered, she agrees. As she and Mary question people, things seem to be going slowly but smoothly - until Jean and Mary walk into trouble with the killer. This is the second in this series and the writer, Peg Marberg, seems to have already run out of ideas for some of the characters. This time around Jean's daughter and decorating partner JR is pretty much written out of the story because she's pregnant and too tired to do much investigating. Charlie is also written out as he and Jean are constantly missing each other when she tries to visit him in the hospital. That these two characters are not used makes it feel as if the writer just can't think of what to do with them. It also seems strange that Jean doesn't try harder to see Charlie. After such a long marriage it appears as if Jean isn't very worried about him, either about his future healing after a surgery at his age nor about his overall welfare after the hospital quarantines him. There's only one scene where she cries over Charlie's absence, but that was because her little dog was really lonely for Charlie. Mary, Jean's sister-in-law and best friend, is again the tag-along sidekick. At first it was refreshing that the two female leads weren't portrayed as perfect people. Jean is still smoking and Mary tends to overeat, but Mary's eating problem is soon used against her, as she's constantly stuffing her face and overfilling her plates with food. This is the more unpleasant, as Jean, though constantly criticizing Mary's eating, also always pushes extra food on her at every opportunity. . Because this is supposed to be about an interior decorator, there are a few decorating hints tossed about, but they all seem to have been stuck in at random and don't really work as helpful decorating tips. But what most bothered me about this story is that the readers are inside Jean's head for most of the book so that we get to hear all of her thoughts and emotions, but when she finally figures out who the killer is, all of a sudden, the readers aren't allowed in on the secret and we don't find out who the killer is until later on in the book. When a writer suddenly withholds from the reader the bits of information that lead to the solution, well, that strikes me as unfair. DECORATED TO DEATH isn't a bad story. There is a fine murder puzzle and enough suspects to make the search interesting. I just wish that I hadn't got the feeling that the writer doesn't seem to be up to putting as much into the series as she really ought.
Reviewed by A.L. Katz, March 2008
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
