Edna Buchanan

Entertaining mystery. It might have been rated 4 stars if the writer had just stuck to the mystery.

The two subplots were totally unnecessary and out of place. Since I was listening to the audio book version, I just skipped ahead. Seriously. Totally unnecessary. The unnecessary romance subplot was particularly difficult to bear because the reader (Anna Fields) didn't sound like (or make the character sound like) she went in for male company... in that way. How can you not have chemistry show more between two characters when you're voicing them BOTH?

I loved the supporting character of Lottie, especially her 'take' on the Queen Mum and Lassie. show less

From the book jacket: U.S. Marshal Michael Venture of the Witness Protection Program relocates a mobster, now a government witness, to a small rural town. The man proves to be a monster unleashed on an unsuspecting community. The results are tragic. To make amends, Venturi leaves the Marshals Service and assembles a team of close confidants to secretly create new identities for innocent men and women whose lives have been ruined through no fault of their own. But before they are relocated show more and reborn, each must be declared “legally dead” – they have to die.

My reactions
Buchanan is a great writer, and I really love her Britt Montero series, set in Miami. This is a standalone novel, though the way she frames it, I could see it becoming a series. (Goodreads shows it as “Michael Venturi, # 1” there is no follow-up novel featuring Venturi. In fact, this is the only book she published featuring this character.)

As it typical of her writing, the plot is fast and furious, and features an interesting array of side characters, from the victims Venturi helps to find new lives, to the crew of confidants – former Marine Danny, doctor Keri, and his mother-in-law Victoria. She gives Venturi a back story that helps to explain his loner status (his wife and child were killed in an accident) and his quasi-paramilitary expertise.

I thought there were one or two too many victims he assisted before all hell broke loose. But I liked how he got out of the jam. The final confrontation with the bad guys was really over-the-top but sure kept me turning pages.

There are only three other books by Buchanan that I have not read. I know she’s no longer writing and I hesitate to finish her list because I know there won’t be any more. Since I started reading her Britt Montero series long before I joined Goodreads, I may go back to that series and start over. show less

An interesting experiment. As usual, Carl Hiaasen was the best. Not a great read, but light summer stuff. I particularly liked Hiaasen's dehumanizing and desentimentalizing the manatee. It was as though he was saying to the other authors, "Enough of this nonsense! A manatee is an eating and f-cking machine with the mental resources of a piece of celery. He could care less about human foibles and so could I ..."

I just hate it when authors try to create strong female characters and instead turn them into half-wits. This Britt person is supposed to be a hard-nosed crime reporter and she has all the instincts of a dead dog. Every time that Britt passed off some event as random or unconnected, I knew that the shit was about to hit the fan. And for a person who’s supposed to ferret out truth and is suspicious of people, she is too quick to pin all the misfortunes on the rabid stalker/fan, Stephanie. show more

Of course Stephanie is not behind the bad things that have been happening. It is Lance’s personal assistant/bodyguard. Right at the end he is killed and it put the suspect out of my head. Stephanie had been fed information on where Lance would be so she could obsessively follow him. Who was feeding her the information? The only one who continuously knew that kind of information was the now dead Niko. But was he really dead? Just when I thought that, he showed up and tried to kill Britt and Lance. Turns out that the studio that Lance previously worked for was in such financial straights that they saw Lance’s backlist as a goldmine. A goldmine if he was dead that is. show less