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FOOL ON THE HILL
by Morgan Hunt
Alyson, April 2008
190 pages
$14.95
ISBN: 1593500270


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Tess Camillo isn't your average crime-buster. She's a breast cancer survivor who's pushing 50, with what might be called a left-field brain and who's still searching for Ms Right.

Her domestic situation is a tad unusual as well. She lives in a cute little San Diego house with her eccentric house-mate Lana, who never found an alternative therapy she didn't like. Tess and Lana have romantic history, but that's now a slightly uneasy blip on the horizon as Lana is now interested solely in men.

FOOL ON THE HILL is the second outing after STICKY FINGERS for Tess, who has a nose for trouble. She and Lana attend a concert where folk-rock star Cody Crowne is the opening act. Next morning Tess, out for an early walk, discovers him crucified on a cliff top.

One of the snags with amateur sleuth books is the hoops the writer must jump through to persuade that the main character just has to get involved with the investigation. In FOOL ON THE HILL the pretext is all a bit thin, in that Tess's main motivation appears to be that Lana, a big fan of Cody's, is devastated by his death.

But it's a tribute to the quality of Morgan Hunt's writing and characterisation that this really doesn't matter too much. Tess is a fantastic main character – the kind of person you want as your best friend. She's loyal, tenacious and has a wonderfully off-the-wall brain with her musings about maths, computers, sex, religion and music.

Hunt does try a touch too hard at times, particularly with some rather flowery passages which would have benefited from an edit. And a rather annoying ending was out of character given Tess's previously sane and sensible behaviour.

FOOL ON THE HILL is one of those genre books, though, where the plot shortcomings really don't matter too much, as Hunt has created a thoroughly likeable and unusual main character. I'll definitely be searching out the first book in the series and looking forward to the forthcoming third.

Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, June 2008

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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