Rating: 
Summary: Romance, Mystery, Hysterical fun!
Review: East of Peculiar lives up to the title. Hannah, the new resident manager of a mid-west retirement community (and our heroine) is surrounded by peculiar characters and goings-on. Every time things begin to heat up between her and the local sheriff (and younger man!), another murder or robbery or other strange happening seems to interrupt them. Aided (or often impeded) by a band of senior citizen sleuths, Hannah is determined to figure out what's going on in the retirement community for which she is reponsible. And then she can return the sheriff's romantic advances. This book is a great deal of fun. Curl up on the sofa or on the beach and enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: EAST OF PECULIAR
Review: Hannah Garvey has had it up to here with her corporate job, failed love
life
and the hurdy gurdy pace of Chicago's concrete canyons. So when she loads
up
the truck for the resplendent quietude of the Missouri Ozarks after
accepting
a job as manager of a retirement development called Valhalla Springs,
everything should prove honky-dory, right?
Well, if it weren't for the fact that soon after her arrival one of the
senior residents gets bludgeoned into the Great Beyond, compliments of a
rolling pin, it just might have been.
Hannah soon finds herself embroiled in a deadly mystery filled with sharp
turns and unexpected twists. Accompanied by a band of oddball amateur
sleuths
wielding blue hair and senior citizen discounts, she sets out to solve the
heinous crime before the murderer closes in on her. Add to that a handsome
headstrong Sheriff with an eye on romance and EAST OF PECULIAR two-steps
towards a hair-raising finally that never lets a reader lose interest.
Suzann Ledbetter, perhaps best known for her westerns (in fact, REDEMPTION
TRAIL is probably one of the best westerns ever written), wields prose
sharp
enough to give readers a papercut. One gets the impression the author as a
child might have spent a lot of time on the wrong end of a bar of soap,
but
it has only served to make her writing sparkle. Saddling up for mysteries
certainly hasn't diminished that ability. Her snappy turns of phrase seem
limitless and inspired from On High. She creates fascinating characters,
entertaining situations and razor-edged dialog. EAST OF PECULIAR is the
first
in a four book series involving Hannah Garvey (two following novels are
already out, SOUTH OF SANITY and NORTH OF CLEVER with the
June-to-be-released
WEST OF BLISS next up) and the author presents just enough of the
relationship between the leads to get a reader champing at the bit for the
next book. --Howard Hopkins...
Rating:
Summary: East, South, North and waiting for West!!!!
Review: I found out about this terrific writer thru amazon.com's list mania!!!! Since I like Anne George, Lillian Jackson Braun, Mary Higgins Clark, Mary Daheim, etc. I thought I would give this series a try!
I loved EAST OF PECULIAR!!! Funny, zany caring characters....easy reading....I finished East and then went on to South of Sanity and North of Clever........you must buy all three and read them back to back to back! I can't wait to read West of Bliss!!!
Pat
Rating:
Summary: This book made me laugh!
Review: I found the characters interesting and entertaining. The story moves along rapidly and suspense builds quickly. Hannah Garvey, has second thoughts about decision to change careers, but finds more than she bargained for at Valhalla Springs. Loveable tenents and a sheriff to raise the temperture. A must read, for readers who enjoy fun with their *whodunits*
Rating:
Summary: Fun! Fun! Fun!
Review: I managed to buy the second book in this installment first. Let me tell you, as soon as I finished South of Sanity I was on Amazon ordering East of Peculiar. I thoroughly enjoyed both books. Suzann Ledbetter has a great series going and I am eagerly waiting for the third one due later this year. East of Peculiar is one of the funniest stories I've read in a long time. Hannah Gravey suffers a midlife crisis. She ups and quits her high power job with advertising and takes over as manager of an exclusive retirement village thinking how hard can it be to watch over a bunch of retired people. Well, apparently it can be pretty hard when a brutal murder happens and the over the hill gang decides to help the police. Hannah has her hands full and a series of events happen to make her job that much harder. Then she meets the man of her dreams who just happens to be seven years younger and the sheriff to boot. As I stated I read the second book first, then the first book. Either way it still works. East of Peculiar introduces all the characters and gives background information about a wonderful group of characters. If you want something light hearted and entertaining, pick up this book and then the second one. I really think you will be as hooked as I've become.
Rating:
Summary: ...
Review: I read "South Of Sanity", the sequel to this book first. Even though it's easy enough to follow the story line if read out of sequence, I think reading this one first gives the reader a little bit better insight into the secondary characters...and glorious characters they are! Janet Evanovich is the only other author that comes to mind with the ability to interweave a good mystery along with a heroine with interesting but flawed looks, and a mouth like Phyllis Diller (she even THINKS funny!). Throw in a hunky hero that's in law inforcement who looks just like________ (fill in the blank with your personal favorite action hero). Top off with another hero that is a bit off-beat. Okay, here's a clue. He's old enough to be an escort for blue haired ladies, but you just want to jump into the pages of this book and slather him with kisses and hug him to death! Top off with a group of elderly, pot-smoking matrons wanting to help our heroine & hero solve the mystery and you have all the ingredients for a ton of laughs, some breath-holding moments and a hot romance that keeps getting hotter. Can't ask much more from a book than that! One complaint.....have to wait until December, 2001 for the 3rd in this series. Ah well, I know the wait will be worth it!
Rating:
Summary: ...
Review: I read "South Of Sanity", the sequel to this book first. Even though it's easy enough to follow the story line if read out of sequence, I think reading this one first gives the reader a little bit better insight into the secondary characters...and glorious characters they are! Janet Evanovich is the only other author that comes to mind with the ability to interweave a good mystery along with a heroine with interesting but flawed looks, and a mouth like Phyllis Diller (she even THINKS funny!). Throw in a hunky hero that's in law inforcement who looks just like________ (fill in the blank with your personal favorite action hero). Top off with another hero that is a bit off-beat. Okay, here's a clue. He's old enough to be an escort for blue haired ladies, but you just want to jump into the pages of this book and slather him with kisses and hug him to death! Top off with a group of elderly, pot-smoking matrons wanting to help our heroine & hero solve the mystery and you have all the ingredients for a ton of laughs, some breath-holding moments and a hot romance that keeps getting hotter. Can't ask much more from a book than that! One complaint.....have to wait until December, 2001 for the 3rd in this series. Ah well, I know the wait will be worth it!
Rating: 
Summary: Could have been good
Review: I really couldn't read this long enough to see if the plot was good because the language in it was so common that it was disgusting. I wish authors would not mess up their stories with common street talk and just use good proper English.
Rating:
Summary: Could have been good
Review: I really couldn't read this long enough to see if the plot was good because the language in it was so common that it was disgusting. I wish authors would not mess up their stories with common street talk and just use good proper English.
Rating: 
Summary: good premise, so-so execution
Review: I wanted to love this book. It has a great title and an intriguing premise: a 40-something advertising executive trades the rat race for a job as manager of a retirement community in the Missouri Ozarks. But this novel read like a first draft. In places it was laugh-out-loud funny, but more often it was just plain unreadable. The prose was supposed to be breezy, I guess, but it often skimmed over transitions and explanations so that the breeziness turned into confusion. Some of the characters were interesting, especially Delbert, the way-too helpful retiree, and Andrik, the grumpy detective. But I didn't buy the main character. She wallowed in a lot of self-pity over her past, but none of it rang true. And I had to skip over the scenes between her and Sheriff David Hendrickson. I think the author was trying for Hepburn-Tracy style banter, and only managed nauseating dialogue that two real adults would be embarrassed to utter. The author tossed in some old movie trivia and a 60-year-old crime, which could have made the plot interesting, but she didn't give us any suspects, and the killer turned out to be somebody we'd never met and didn't know about till he/she confronted the main character at the end. With some decent editing and a thorough rewrite, this book could have been good.
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