Don't bother with this one

The Poisoned Rose by Daniel Judson
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Page after page of pointless violence. Finally about page 255 the author starts tying the apparently random violence together and you get hints of who the characters are and the motivations and corruption that lead to all the rest. But it is too little too late. I scanned scene after scene it was just too boring to read. Even the supposedly good folks are terrible: a protagonist who is constantly in a drunken stupor, a sweet innocent 15-year-old who is depicted as purposely trying to lure the protagonist astray. I finished the book hoping for something to make it worthwhile, but I never found it.

View all my reviews

Mystery in style

If Looks Could Kill by Kate White
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I LOVE it! The real trick in a mystery is to give the reader enough hints so that they think they are smarter than the detective. Then as the climax approaches, the detective comes to the conclusion the reader already figured out. While the reader is basking in I-told-you-so, suddenly that conclusion falls apart and a totally different, but ultimately logical, perpetrator is revealed, ideally in the midst of trying to kill the protagonist. Kate White does exactly that in this tale of magazine true crime writer Bailey Weggins who puts on her detective hat when her editor's nanny is poisoned. All the glamour--and politics -- of the magazine biz is drawn perfectly since White was editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan from 1998-2012. White also has an uncanny skill at describing the oddities in facial features: a head too small, eyes too far apart, eyes so dark the pupil disappears. My only regret is that I waited so long to read this 2002 gem.

View all my reviews