Book 2 of a fun mystery series. Great story and characters ( )

law-enforcement, mystery, drag-queens, humor, las-vegas, romance

Maddie and her shoe fetish are hot on the trail of a mystery and Ramirez is having fits. Bestie Dana and the *mahvelous* Marco decide to join in and go to Vegas to *help*. A crazy time is had by all with plot twists and humor galore! Fun read on a dreary afternoon. ( )

Maddie gets a mysterious phone call from someone claiming to be her father and before the call is disconnected she hears what she thinks is a gunshot.

Determined to finally get some answers from her mother about her runaway father, Maddie confronts her Mom who still will only say that he ran away to Las Vegas with Lola.

So Maddie enlists the help and company of her BF Dana and the receptionist at her stepfather's hair salon, Marco (typical gay man stereotype) and they head off to Las Vegas to find Larry.

What they find had me rolling in my chair laughing and crying from sheer enjoyment. Okay, it wasn't the great American novel, but it was sheer fun! ( )

This book is too much like a pale imitation of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels. It has all the same elements - an over protective male (only one in this book), a cute heroine, a female sidekick who makes every situation worse, an amusing family, etc. etc. Unfortunately the author has gone just a bit too far with her story and has moved it too far over the line which separates amusing from silly.

I found the character of Maddie deeply annoying. She is represented as shallow and shoe mad and she interferes in everything, for no reason at all. Her "boyfriend" is a police officer and must ask her on at least ten occasions in this book to butt out and stop getting in the way but every time Maddie dreams up some reason why she should carry on doing what she wants and then gets herself into trouble and has to be rescued. However "cute" she is, I can't see why he stays with her.

This story is set in Las Vegas and involves drag queens (transvestites ?) and some gay characters. I didn't really like the author's attitude to these people. She seems always to be sniggering at their alternative lifestyle choices and thus her main characters do so too - all those characters are very camp and cartoony. There are no "ordinary" gay characters at all in the book. I was a little uncomfortable with this.

There are also quite a few typos in the Kindle version of this book (mainly associated with apostrophe use), not enough to be distracting but enough to be noticeable.

I liked the first book in this series a lot. I didn't like this one - I thought that it was silly and that Maddie was annoying. I shall not be reading the thirds. ( )

Once again another murder mystery with Maddie. I really liked the first book in this series, as I said in my earlier review of Spying in High Heels. I was super excited about this book, mainly because I had such a fun ride with the first book, and the authors tone is just so enjoyable to read. I have to say that I am glad to see that the authors tone has remained completely consistent, I love the humor infused through every aspect of the book. I could really see myself wanting to sit down and have dinner with Maddie, she's just so funny and likable.

This second book is much more Maddie seeking out trouble, that trouble finding her. In the first book, he boyfriend just up and disappeared and she responding in a neurotic but somewhat normal girlfriend way. This book Maddie has to cross state lines to find the trouble, although in her defense she did just get a rather unnerving voicemail from her long lost father, so I can understand the desire to see him out.

The one thing I didn't really enjoy about this book, and maybe "not enjoy" is to strong a term, but I felt like some of the threads in the story were not completely wrapped up. For instance, Maddie meets Felix, a writer for the tabloids, who helps/follows her around looking for his next story. When all the action is done, basically he disappears, Maddie picks up a paper and reads what he wrote. I could have done with at least some kind of after action interaction between the two of them, after all they did survive some pretty insane circumstance.

Another thread that wasn't fully wrapped up to me, was the relationship Maddie has with her father. Again when all the action was over with, Larry leaves Maddie a phone message, and she listens to it, but that is kind of where things end. You don't see the two of them getting together and really talking, no working anything out, or even a promise to keep in touch; just an unreturned voicemail.

Those two things aside, I really enjoyed the book. It was another really fun time reading along with Maddie's adventures. There was some really interesting new characters to pop up, most I assume only for this book. But some characters have the potential to continue on with the series, like Marco, who was amusing for me from the beginning. I can't wait to see how things continue forward with Ramirez, I really love the chemistry between him and Maddie.

Overall, this was a really solid second book, and I would recommend it to just about anyone. Who doesn't love a good mystery with some humor thrown in? ( )