Moon Music

Rating:
Summary: No Redeeming Value
Review: I wonder if Ms. Kellerman was hoping to make up for lack of a plot through the use of very foul language, poor taste and strange characters with no redeeming value? Come on, now, girlfriends who encourage their lovers to go get satisfaction from prostitutes and manage to keep smiling while doing his dirty laundry? I thought this was a detective novel, not science fiction! This was my first experience reading a Faye Kellerman novel. Unfortunately, it will probably be my last. Very disappointing. : (

Rating:
Summary: A Disappointing Book
Review: I have always enjoyed Faye Kellerman's books up until this one. I admire her writing, and her plots stay at least within the realm of possibility (probably not all happening to one couple as in Decker/Lazarus, though). But Moon Music strays too far into the metaphysical. If I want sci-fi I'll buy a book in that genre. I don't want it in my detective novels.

Rating:
Summary: I loved it.
Review: No, it is not what I expected, and that is a good thing. If you are looking for to be throughly entertained by another's imagination this is the book for you. And what an imagination she has. Totally unpredictible ride from cover to cover. I liked the characters with all their little "twitches", I liked the brothers' dealings with the mother. These characters have flaws a mile wide and still remain human and likable. The sci-fi twist was different, and I loved it. I probably would not have picked it up if I had known about the s/f aspect so I an grateful that I didn't. I felt the voice of Poe was right on target. Las Vegas will never be the same for me. Brava! Waiting for the sequel.

Rating:
Summary: new characters are good;author told too much too soon
Review: In "Moon Music," Faye Kellerman introduces a new character to her writing. Det.Sargent Romulus Poe has potential to be a very compelling police officer. As with many new characters, the author tries to tell us too much too soon. While reading this selection I was bombarded with details I didn't want to know. The intereaction between Poe, his brother Remus (do you remember your Latin?), mother Emma and assorted other people became very confusing. I wanted to scream "the story, stick to the story!!" many times. With the setting of Las Vagas and Poe's wonderful coworkers (loved Fat Patty), the old girlfriend with obsessive compulsive problems was a poor story line from an excellent author. No sooner did I finally discover the thread of the plot when everything shifted and I was lost. Ms. Kellerman threw in several references to atomic testing, suicide, incest (was Alison Poe's half sister?), and cancer almost like a shot gun blast. She allowed the stor! y pellets to develop in a random pattern and followed some to confusing endings. Romulus Poe is great ( how does he win at the Vagas tables?) without the excess baggage of the old girl friend from a grade B si fi story. I hope Ms. Kellerman will continue with Poe, but place him in a more releastic plot setting and please get him a better place to live.

Rating:
Summary: Sorry, but I'm feeling let down!
Review: I have enjoyed all of Mrs. Kellerman's Decker/Lazarus novels. Of course, I couldn't wait to find a copy of Moon Music to soak up the lives of a new bunch of her detectives! Fat Patty (now, who would call a fellow detective Fat Patty??) was really the only appealing character! I hate to be critical, but I just didn't enjoy this book. I kept reading, though, hoping for some improvement in the story or some twisted reason for the murders. I really wanted to like some of the characters. What I really don't like is people turning into animals & that being the motive for murder.

Rating:
Summary: A Waste of Money, Time & Effort
Review: This is one of the worst books I've read recently. After reading some as poetic & complex as the Blind Assassin and something light and smooth like Memoirs of a Geisha, I could only describe the Moon Music as an "eyesore". The introduction and first few chapters of the novel was promising & I thought I'd be offered a breath-taking detective story. Sadly, very soon the identity of the murderer was revealed & the story all of a sudden became too dull and simple for detective story fans. Worse still, it later became a total sci-fic thing--which I hate. I never expected to find any sci-fic element in a dective story. This book is as boring as the author's husband's "The Clinic". I shall never read anything by the Kellermans again.

Rating:
Summary: Bad news for Kellerman fans
Review: I only wish I had read the reviews before I wasted my money on this book. It started out promising but I really didn't care for most of the characters. Fat Patty was probably the best and it was a shame to degrade her with that nickname and have her find a big fat boyfried. I don't like to know from the very begining of a mystery who done it and this was so easy to figure out. Plus about 3/4 of the way in it turns into a sci-fi book; what's with that ending! Please Faye go back to your Rina character, forget about Poe in the future. I won't buy a sequel.

Rating:
Summary: Awful
Review: At times there are books or films the offend. Not because of language or content but because they are an insult to the reader's intelligence. This is one of them. The book starts off interestingly enough with a complex cop character and his widowed Indian lady friend who find a mutilated corpse in the dessert. As with most police procedurals the cop's troubled private life is interwoven into the story. One could argue that Poe's conflict with his brother, his gambling, his addiction for prostitutes, his relationship with his mad ex girlfriend, his mother's cancer and the state of affairs with his much older lady friend are a bit too much for one book but it keeps the story up. The Whodunit itself is so simple that the readers must think it can't be that easy and there must be some twist in the tale at the end. There isn't. You know right from the start who the killer is and that the second murder was commited by someone else. And even in that case it's obvious. But when in the end, after about 450 pages of a very realistic thriller the murderer transforms herself into a hawk and a wolf I frankly felt taken the mickey out of. This twist in the tale defies belief because nothing prepares the reader for a horror thriller with supernatural elements. Apart from that it is completely unnecessary because it doesn't really add anything to the plot. I got the impression that the author manouvered herself into a position where she couldn't find any plausible solution for her book and just invented a deus ex machina. This was easily one of the worst books I have ever read and I am mad at the author for stealing my precious time. She should have asked her husband's advice on this one!

Rating:
Summary: Save your money - this one goes straight into the trash bin
Review: This is by far the worst book by Faye Kellerman. She has forgotten the aphorism, "to thine ownself be true" Here she has taken bits and pieces from other popular mass market paperback writers and put them together in a dreadful pastiche. Her lowlife Las Vegas characters seem to come primarily from Elmore Leonard but without any of that writer's irony and ability to give them traces of humanity. She tosses in some of Tony Hillerman's Native Americans. She has given us a female pathologist on loan from Patricia Cornwall. This pathologist just happens to be a Hindu for no reason that I could discern, other than a chance to join a half Native American Indian detective and Indian Indian pathologist in a romance, if you can dignify what she presents as their relationship a romance. She presents no reason why any woman with any self respect should be attracted to this jerk. She borrows from herself through the inclusion of a Orthodox Jewish police lieutenant and his wife who keeps a kosher restaurant. All of these characters are flat, flat, flat. She has included a bit of lycanthropy, as well as some fantasy/science fiction. This plot, if you can call it that is a dreadful mishmash.
Again, save your money, pass on this one. She does much better when she sticks to her particular little niche in LA. I have a horrible feeling from the ending that she may plan to subject her Los Angeles characters to this dreadful Las Vegas crew in some future endeavor.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: All I can say is I wish she would right a sequel. I don't usually want sequels but this one just crys for one. I could just feel the desert wind!