Joanna Campbell Slan

First Line: I was rummaging around in the trash Dumpster searching for my lost paycheck, when I reached down and grabbed Cindy Gambrowski's severed leg.

Finding a severed leg in the Dumpster would be a memorable beginning to anyone's day, and it certainly was to Kiki Lowenstein. The discovery begins a search for Cindy Gambrowski, and while the police are looking, Kiki has to keep on truckin' with her almost teenaged daughter who's an angel one second and a demon the next, with her show more mother-in-law (who always seems to be the latter), and with her prickly co-owner of their scrapbooking store Time in a Bottle. To put the icing on the cake, it's December in St. Louis, Missouri, and anyone in retail can tell you that the sales figures for this month can make or break a business. But Cindy Gambrowski was a customer, and Kiki can't get her out of her mind-- even when co-owner Bama goes ballistic when the shop is featured on the television news. Kiki searches for clues as best she can during the busiest season of all.

The scrapbooking and retail aspects of this book are very well done. By the time I was finished with the last page, I had an itch to take up scrapbooking-- a craft I'd never had any interest in before. Slan shares ideas and tips that are guaranteed to get any crafter anxious to start a new project. Trying to walk that fine line of supply and demand, a shoplifter who's stealing some of their best items, having enough help in the shop to serve all the customers-- the author made this retail veteran feel right at home.

There were some characters who got on my nerves a time or two. Kiki has a mother-in-law who goes out of her way to be hateful to her. I've said in other reviews that I can do without the obnoxious mother-in-law, and my opinion hasn't changed. Bama, the co-owner of Time in a Bottle, is abrasive to the point of being outrageous. Although the reason for Bama being the way she is is given at book's end, I still wondered why everyone let her get away with her behavior.

Kiki seemed to me to be the type of woman who wants to be liked by everyone... a woman who wants to get along with no fighting and harsh words. Unfortunately, she's not surrounding herself with the right people for her wishes to be a reality. The only time I really disagreed with something she did, however, was when a man walked up to her and her co-workers at 11 PM and asked about a mutual acquaintance because he had flowers to deliver. Come on, Kiki-- what flower shop would spend the payroll to make deliveries at that hour of night?

The search for Cindy Gambrowski is a puzzling one, and although subtle clues are given all along the way, the ending is still a shocker. This isn't your typical cozy mystery. There's more meat on the bone. Yes, the characters are front and center as they should be, and yes, you get a feel for the craft aspect of the book. You also see how difficult it is for a single mother with limited funds to raise a child. But there are even deeper issues-- such as spousal abuse-- that Slan deals with in such a way to make us all stop and think... and wonder what we would do in the same situation.

Did it feel strange for me to begin reading a series with book four? No, the author does a good job of providing enough backstory for things to make sense without bogging down the plot. I enjoyed being in Kiki's world for a while and look forward to meeting her again. show less

Kiki Lowenstein is married to a very successful businessman, mother of an eleven-year-old girl named Anya, and an enthusiastic scrapbooking hobbyist. She's good enough that Dodie, the owner of her favorite scrapbooking shop has tried a couple of times to recruit her to teach classes.

Then her husband, George, is found dead in a hotel room, apparently of a heart attack. And yet, the circumstances are strange. He'd just had a full medical exam that found him completely healthy, including no show more signs of heart trouble. The housekeeper who found him seems to have left the area. He was seen earlier in the day in a high-end restaurant, with two young women.

It gets worse. George has apparently "borrowed" a half million dollars from the real estate development company he was a partner in. His life insurance goes not to Kiki, but to his mother, Sheila, who loves Anya, but intensely dislikes Kiki. Kiki has to sell their house just to pay back the money George owed to the firm, and be able to move to much more modest, even slightly edgy, neighborhood. (Somewhere during this process she impulsively adopts a rescue Great Dane puppy, whom she names Gracie.) And there's still the question of how George really died, and who the two young women were.

Kiki finally takes that job teaching scrapbooking, and starts learning more about her husband and his activities from the women who were once her neighbors and are now her scrapbooking students and clients. She's also doing some supplementary dog-sitting, for extra income from her former housekeeper's other business. The housekeeper/dogsitter, Mert, has become a good friend, and she's smart and clever, and helps Kiki find more information, too.

It is, of course, sadly predictable that Gracie, being a big dog and a rescue, is perfect, and the little dogs Kiki sits for Mert are, at best, comic relief. The two chihuahuas are described as "useless," and are clearly untrained. The Pomeranian, is treated like a doll by her owner, and by Anya, with an extensive wardrobe of "cute" clothes that a Pomeranian in a Missouri summer has no need of. (Yes, dogs sometimes need clothes, and a little dog like a Pom, even with all that hair, likely needs clothes in a Missouri winter. That's not what's happening here; it's all about using the little dogs and their never-seen owners as comic relief.) (Why, yes, I do have a small dog! She's an eleven-pound Powderpuff Chinese Crested, sitting with me as I type. She's also my service dog, and better behaved than either most of the kids we encounter, or many of the big dogs we meet.)

I do like Kiki, and a number of the other characters, including Mert and Dodie, are likable and interesting. My crankiness about the little dogs being used as comic relief aside, though, there are other problems. Kiki is at one point verbally told by her new landlord that he's evicting her. She never gets a written notice. Is Missouri one of those states where tenants have zero rights? Also, Kiki never gets around to telling anyone until all the other excitement is over. Even given her acknowledged passivity that she struggles against, that's just bizarre. If tenants have no rights, or if Kiki just isn't going to fight it, she has to have a new place to move by the end of the month. She's overly passive at first, but waiting and risking having no place to go when her stuff gets put out on the street, is beyond passive, and not consistent with how Kiki behaves otherwise.

On the plus side, though, Kiki no only gradually gets smarter about what questions she's asking about what's really going on; she also gains confidence in herself through the success of her scrapbooking classes and commissions. This is the first book in the series, and I'm sure the Kiki of subsequent books is stronger and more confident, because that groundwork has been laid.

So I have mixed feelings about this book. I like the characters, and the story overall is good, but there are some irritating aspects. However, all the dogs who appear in the book are alive at the end, so that's a plus!

I bought this book. show less

Joanna Campbell Slan's first Jane Eyre Chronicles book, Death of a Schoolgirl, was one of my Best Reads of 2012, so I really looked forward to this second in the series, Death of a Dowager. The anticipation was heightened because Jane was destined to deal with those pesky, entitled Ingrams. I definitely wanted to see what Slan had in store for them.

Once again, Slan uses language that is reminiscent of the original Brontë classic, and little, brave, observant Jane Eyre Rochester once again show more makes the perfect amateur sleuth. There are two main mysteries to solve in Death of a Dowager: one involving the murder of Silvana Ingram, and the other concerning Jane's possession of a love letter written by George IV that could have devastating repercussions on both the Crown and the nation. Of the two, I felt the one involving the royal love letter was the less engaging, although it did show the country could easily have been thrown into chaos by the discovery of such a thing.

And this highlights one of the strengths of these Jane Eyre Chronicles: the period in which they are set. Jane and the rest of the cast are placed firmly in the time in which they lived, and this historical setting adds so much depth to the story. When readers learn that people living and traveling in London came home every day covered in coal dust, or that traveling by public coach often meant another passenger's lice would try their best to hop from their host to you... well, that brings them up close and personal to the time period.

Once again, Joanna Campbell Slan served up an excellent mystery featuring one of my all-time favorite fictional characters. Now it's on to the third and last book, Christmas at Ferndean Manor. show less

First Line: Reader, I am delivered of a son.

That first line will make any lover of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre smile. The Rochesters live in Ferndean with their six-month-old son Ned, and their servants. It's been a life of seclusion, and Rochester is still recuperating from the injuries he sustained when Thornfield burned to the ground.

Rochester's ward, Adèle Varens is ten years old and in a boarding school in London. Jane is worried about her because what few letters they've received show more from the girl have sounded strange and have imparted very little information-- a decided change from Adèle's normal behavior.

On the day when Rochester's doctor comes for a visit, they receive a letter from Adèle. It's another short, bland missive, but in a faint scribble on the page, Jane sees the words Au secours! (help) repeated three times. At first the Rochesters believe that the overly dramatic little girl is merely making a bid for attention, but when Jane finds a small note that looks very much like a threat included with the letter, the decision is made that Jane will go to London to make sure that everything is all right. Rochester is under doctor's orders to remain at home and will follow her in a few days.

The journey to London is a nightmare made even worse when Jane is beaten and robbed at one of the stops. Barely pausing at the home of Rochester's friend (where she'll be staying), Jane rushes to the school in time to see a body being taken away in the pouring rain. One of the schoolgirls is dead. What is first believed to be death by natural causes soon turns into a murder investigation, and since Adèle was partnered with the dead girl and vocal about not liking her, the Bow Street Runners are very interested in speaking to her.

The school is one teacher short, and a plan is formulated to have Jane temporarily pose as a teacher to insure that not only Adèle but all the girls are safe while the search is on for the murderer. This decision will put Jane's life in danger as well.

When I first learned of this book, I thought about all the novels based on Jane Austen's characters and thought, "It's about time Jane Eyre got her turn!" I'm not one for re-reading books, but there's always an exception to any rule. Jane Eyre is my exception to the No Re-Reading Rule.

Joanna Campbell Slan writes in a style so very reminiscent of Brontë's classic, but never is she a slave to the original. The style of the writing pulled me in immediately, but the story itself is what made me devour the pages. I was so engrossed and reading so quickly that it's a miracle that my eyeballs didn't catch fire. Little brave, intelligent, observant Jane is a perfect sleuth, and with the dead girl being so universally disliked by everyone at the school, all the clues Jane gathers don't seem to shorten the list of suspects.

The author introduces several new characters that add a great deal to the book, and I was also happy to discover that the police officer in charge of the investigation wasn't a slow-witted, belligerent oaf. A secondary plot line involving Jane's mugging kept me intrigued throughout; I almost couldn't keep myself from peeking ahead to see if I'd solved that particular mystery correctly.

Have you ever read a book in which you couldn't guess the identity of the killer, then when the person is revealed you want to slap yourself silly? That's me with Death of a Schoolgirl. I didn't know whodunit it until the most obvious clue of all was given... and then I realized that the author had placed clues throughout the book that I just hadn't seen. I love it when that happens!

If you're getting the impression that I loved this book, you are one hundred per cent correct. I only had one small item that momentarily threw me offstride (a question about the timeline and the potato famine in Ireland), but I shook that off immediately and kept on devouring the book. If you are a Jane Eyre lover, chances are excellent that you will love this book, too. (Get a copy now!) If you've never read the classic novel, I think that you will still enjoy this book as the marvelous historical mystery that it is.

I only have one question: When will I be able to get my hands on the next book in the Jane Eyre Chronicles??? show less