reviews

When Cutting Edge Scamming Meets Florida Hijinks Author: Carl Hiaasen Careening out of control in slap-stick over-the-top classic Hiaasen style, Razor Girl is the latest adventure of former Detective, now turned restaurant inspector, Yancy. First introduced to readers in Bad Monkey, Yancy is desperate to ditch roach patrol and return to the world of crime, if only he can convince the sheriff to overlook the Dust Buster assault that originally cost him his badge. When a high-profile kidnapping case involving a Duck Dynasty like star hits Dade county, Yancy leaps at the chance for redemption only to be pulled into the misadventures of [...]

  Author: Allen Eskens A good mystery has a lot of moving parts.  It needs to be well plotted enough so that the reader doesn’t solve the main plot too early, the characters have to be either likeable or despicable enough that we love to hate them, and there has to be enough meat on the bones of both to carry us into the world created by the author.  That’s a lot to ask, and it’s surely the main reason that a lot of mysteries fall short. But what of those that don’t?  The ones that leave us satisfied and [...]

Torpid Terrorists Take Over or . . . How to Forget a Plot Author: Nelson DeMille Deep in my latest eBay mystery audio book lot, I discovered the much-acclaimed Nelson DeMille’s The Panther. Almost immediately, my dad snatched it from my towering to be read pile, sailed through its hefty 20+ audio discs (832 pages worth) in less than a week, and praised it on a nearly daily basis. As a result, my fiancé and I decided to start on the massive compendium of discs on our 10+ hour Thanksgiving drive. Little did we suspect that the emotionless, dry reading, the tissue thin plot, the continually moribund witticisms, and the plodding storyline would [...]