Eileen Harris

The second of the Alicia Trent Mystery Series was a book I have been impatiently waiting to read and it did not disappoint. The first book in the series,Antique Magic, was excellent . I have been waiting on tenterhooks for book two to be available for review.

Eileen Harris has come up with a hook that grabs the reader and pulls them from one book to the next. In Antique Magic a prediction is made by the magical clock. It predicted that Alicia would discover the dead body of a friend. At the show more beginning of Antique Forgery Alicia is preparing to evaluate a jewellery collection. The collection belongs to Janice and Arthur Darnell who have known Alicia for many years. The collection is located in a part of the country Alicia has never visited. And where she knows nobody. Alicia feels she has beaten the prediction. Events conspire so that people who ought to be half a continent anyway at least turn up to visit. During one of those visit Kendra, who is one of Alicia’s closest friends, is found dead. Alicia is determined that there will be justice for her friend and that the killer caught. There is another death and this just makes Alicia more determined to find out the truth.

I loved most of this book. Eileen Harris has become one of my favourite writers. Addicted to her stories from the first of her books I read. I am glad that Antique Forgery lived up to my expectations of story and style.

The writing style of the author is simple and unpretentious. This makes it easy to read and propels you through the story at lightning rate. There was enough information at the beginning so that a new reader could follow what was going on but not so much a returning reader would be bored.

The writing leaves you thinking that you have been clever enough to spot the murderer and solve the crime. Then wham you are slapped around the face with a big Red Herring that makes you realise you have been completely duped. It is cleverly done.

Characters from the first book made a reappearance and it was good to see those characters being developed. New characters are introduced. I hope to see them again in future books.

Alicia is not a private investigator and does not go looking for adventure. She is one of the partners of an Antique Store in Scottsdale, Arizona and would be quite content if no adventure came her way. When she finds herself in situations where skill and determination and nerve are required she always steps up to the mark. Alicia is the type to take charge and not be frightened away by misfortune.

This book had two other future predictions for Alicia so I am hoping this means another book is on it’s way. Something I am looking forward to already.

So why after having been so fulsome in my praise have I only given this book a 3* rating. Because there is a fault in the resolution of the storyline. One that doesn't affect the story or the outcome but is about the wrapping up of loose ends.

Inheritance law simply does not work this way. It seemed to me that there was either a lack of research or a misunderstanding of the principles of inheritance law. Despite this I would recommend that everybody gives this Series a try. It is an enjoyable read and deserves to be much more widely known show less

Antique dealer Alicia Trent has met Mrs. Hall, the woman in the huge house with the large hoard of treasures only once, many years ago when she was a teenager. Now, as an adult, she has been hired to appraise the collection after Mrs. Hall has died.

From the moment Alicia arrives, there is mystery after mystery. Alicia even suspects that Mrs. Hall did not die of natural causes. The mystery deepens when she finds a bottle with swirling colours and hidden passageways all throughout the show more mansion.

I loved the pacing of the book. It kept me on edge waiting for the next dreadful thing to happen or to be found. Mixed in to the whole story was a little romance to lighten things up a bit. It was a good balance.

I appreciated getting to know the characters. I think my favourite was Mrs. Baylor, the housekeeper with a flair for making wonderful meals and making the others feel better when tough stuff was happening.

I liked the determination in Alicia’s character to finish out the job even when it seemed like her life might be in danger. I especially liked the way the author was able to represent the characters in one light that made them possibly be threatening on one hand, or could take that behaviour and turn it into something positive so that it became just like a plot twist. You didn’t know if they were good or bad.

Lots of plot twists. Lots of fun. I gave Antique Magic 4 stars out of 5.

Thank you to the publishers for providing a copy of the book in exchange for a fair and honest review. A positive opinion was not required. All thoughts are my own.

This review was published on my blog Shelf Full of Books http://kathrynsshelffullofbooks.blogspot.com/2014/12/antique-magic-blog-tour-wit... show less

Walking to her car after her bridge game, Amelia Armstrong discovered a small boy hiding behind a dumpster. Marc was hiding from two large men who had been holding him captive and abusing him. Escaping with Marc to safety, Amelia called upon her friends from the bridge club who rallied together to help Marc sets the lives of these women topsy-turvy and makes danger the name of the game.

I would classify this book as a cozy mystery type of book. Eight crime-fighting septuagenarians is a bit show more hard to swallow but wonderfully delightful to think about. Their backgrounds make the possibility of the roles they take on quite plausible, it’s the physicality of sleuthing at their age that is a bit hard to truly believe. A seventy-five year old grandma belly-crawling through the grass? Hmm…. I hope I have as much moxie as these women do at that age.

I liked that these women were not afraid to take care of themselves, but were wise enough to know when they needed help. They mostly did things in pairs so that they always had someone to back them up. I also liked that they didn’t just work with people of their own generation. Their receptionist was a young woman, someone that would seem like an unlikely fit with eight elderly ladies, but who in reality fit in very well even though on the outside she looked more like a punk rocker.

I didn’t find there was a great deal of depth to the character development, though there was enough for me to have the appropriate response to Marc’s soon-to-be-grandmother.

The Black Cane was an enjoyable light crime/mystery read. I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars.

Thank you to the publishers for providing a copy of the book in exchange for a fair and honest review. A positive opinion was not required. All thoughts are my own.

This review was published on my blog Shelf Full of Books http://kathrynsshelffullofbooks.blogspot.com/2014/09/book-review-black-cane-by-e... show less

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a non-reciprocal review.
(There will be spoilers).

I was excited to read this book. A group of elderly ladies who play bridge together become detectives? I was all in.

There are several cases handled in the book besides the main one which I liked. I also like that the main case was mostly wrapped up by the end of the book. I was worried that, like many series, it would end on a cliffhanger to try and draw readers back. I don’t like that. I show more prefer a complete story in one book, even if it connects to other books. Instead of dragging on the main story with Marc, it starts up a new mystery that will be continued in the next book.

In general I didn’t find much to dislike about the characters save for Marc. He got better as the story went on, possibly because he took a backseat in the story, but when he first showed up he read more like a caricature than a child to me.

I liked Amelia and may have been a little biased because she was a translator. Most of the characters were fine, though there are quite a few and they didn’t all have time to be developed. That’s all right in a case like this where a few characters can be focused on in one book and a few others can be focused on in the next. I’ve only read the first book, though, and I could honestly only name a few of the members off the top of my head, so I hope the others each get a chance to have the spotlight in the future.

As far as the writing, this book came off like a nice rough draft to a story. There were a lot of errors I caught, mostly missing quotation marks or grammatical errors.

Examples: “There was lots of good-natured complaint about the luck of the cards…”
“If it were reasonable…”
“When she completed that chore. she and Darlene had time…”

On top of that, the prose could get repetitive. There’s a lot of:
XX said, “Hi.”
YY said, “The weather is nice today.”
ZZ said, “I don’t feel comfortable speaking.”

I know it’s better to use ‘said’ than browse through a thesaurus and throw in weird words, but there was little variation in how a lot of the dialogue was put together.

A good editor could have helped correct the errors as well as smooth out some plot points. Overall I liked the mysteries they solved but I wish some things had been addressed, like how people were hearing about the club. It seemed strange that someone like a school boy they had never met would know about them and I would have liked an explanation. There were also pieces of dialogue that could have been fixed up, like:

“A retired cop could come in handy, because I’m sure there is a crime involved here somewhere.”

This is in response to a child being kidnapped, held hostage, starved and beaten, among other things. The fact that she seems unsure about there being a crime involved sounds off.

I know it’s expensive for an indie author to hire an editor, but I think it would be worth it. There’s a lot of good ideas here that just need polished.

In the end, I give it 3 stars.. Good ideas are nice, but presentation is important, too, and I hope the author finds the resources to work some more on this book. show less