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Sunday, May 22, 2011

Peace, Love and Murder by Nancy Holzner


This was an “out of the box” read for me, for the most part I tend to keep to Urban Fantasy with lots of romance. If I do pick up a mystery it is usually a paranormal one, but I had heard that Holzner was a good writer and the price for this book was a bargain: only $0.99 at www.amazon.com.

Blurb:

Finding a corpse in the trunk of your cab is a rotten way to start the day. For Bo Forrester, things go straight downhill from there. The cops are asking a hell of a lot of questions. The murder weapon turns up too close for comfort. And the attractive woman giving him the eye turns out to be Trudy Hauser, a cute-but-crazy deputy dead set on arresting him for murder.

Bo returned to Rhodes, an upstate New York college town, hoping to reconcile with his parents, gentle hippies who couldn’t accept his decision to join the Army at eighteen. Twenty years later, the commune where he grew up is a subdivision and his parents are long gone. Pondering his next move, Bo takes a job driving a cab. And he has no clue how the bullet-riddled body of art philanthropist Fred Davies ended up in the trunk.

Now, he can’t turn around without bumping into Trudy—it’s not her case, but that’s not slowing her down. The local cops, suspecting robbery as the motive, are right behind her. When Davies’s beautiful widow asks Bo for help, he can’t say no. Starting his own investigation, he plunges into a world of privilege, corruption, and high-stakes greed. A lot of people had reason to want Davies dead: a flirtatious art history professor with a taste for booze and men; her insanely jealous, ex-felon husband; the business partner with a secret addiction; and an avant-garde artist who proclaims that murder is the ultimate art form.

As the body count escalates, Bo must combine the skills he learned as a soldier with the values he grew up with on the commune to flush out a vicious murderer—if he manages to stay alive that long.

Review:

Peace, Love, and Murder turned out to be worth all 99 pennies and I'm really glad I gave it a chance. It is written from the POV our hero, Bo, and Holzner gave him a believable and likable voice. I felt like I was in his head trying to put the puzzle pieces together right alongside him. I have a knack for figuring out plots ahead of time, but I wasn’t able to solve this murder until Bo did! That alone gets it kudos from me .

The characters in the story are quirky and well developed. Holzner made Bo very mult-dimensional; I felt like I really knew him and what made him tick. My favorite secondary character was probably Trudy. Poor, poor, socially awkward Trudy . She has serious self-confidence issues and is trying to prove herself in a profession dominated by men.

I would have liked a little more romance (cause that is my thing), but this wasn’t that kind of story so I won’t include that in my rating. It is a straight up, well written mystery. If you are headed to the pool or beach this summer I strongly recommend you download this little gem onto your e-reader and enjoy!

4 murdering Sheep!

SS

2 comments:

  1. Good review of this mystery. The title alone sounds intriguing and the price too :)

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  2. Are you sure the girls name is Trudy and not Katie? lol Sounds like me, and an interesting book to check out. Great review :)

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