Rating: 
Summary: Another compelling Amanda Pepper episode
Review: In case you just tuned in: 30-something Amanda Pepper teaches English at a prep school in Philadelphia. Her live-in fiance, Louisiana native C. K. Mackenzie, recently resigned his position as a homicide cop to pursue a Ph.D. in criminology. Though they've collaborated informally to solve murders in the past, the couple now works part-time after school hours in a private investigation firm. After all, poorly-paid private school teachers and beginning graduate students have to watch their pennies, and additional income helps.Enter Claire Fairchild, an elderly woman who hires them to do a background check on her daughter-in-law-to-be, Emmie Cade. Amanda and C.K. easily uncover a number of sordid details from Emmie's dubious past. When they stop by Claire's condo to drop off the information (and hopefully get paid for their work), they discover that their client has died, presumably from a heart attack. But what really happened? And was Emmie involved? While Amanda wants to sort it all out -- against C.K.'s better judgment -- she's simultaneously bombarded with visits from her future in-laws and her own Florida-based parents, and everyone's pressuring the two to set a wedding date and get on with marriage plans. And it's the first week of school, for heaven's sakes; Amanda's also dealing with adolescent angst and _The Lord of the Flies_ to boot. How many balls can she juggle? We keep turning pages to find out.
Rating:
Summary: A Delightful Addition to a Solid Series
Review: It's official! Series heroine Amanda Pepper and her long-time, ex-cop lover, C.K. Mackenzie have finally decided to commit matrimony. On top of moonlighting with C.K. as private investigators to help keep the wolf from the door while C.K. works on his PhD in criminology, now all she has to do is face up to the pressures of a new term at Philly Prep while bracing herself for a close encounter of the first kind with C. K.'s unconventional parents and pacifying her own demanding family anent her as yet up-in-the-air wedding plans. What Amanda really doesn't need when the novel opens is the added complication of overbearing, reluctant mother-in-law-to-be Claire Fairchild who hires them to do a background check of her wealthy son Leo's enigmatic new fiancee, Emmie Cade, and suddenly winds up very dead because someone has decided to call a halt to their investigation by poisoning her. In for a penny...Amanda doggedly tracks down Emmie's past only to discover that it's a checkered one indeed. There seem to be way too many loose ends for her to make sense of until a clever killer makes one simple yet fatal slip. Amanda may teach English, but she's enough of a mathematician to add up the pieces that quickly point to the real culprit in the veritable nick of time in the slam-bang finale to this thoroughly engrossing caper. As always, the ex-teacher in me takes an enormous amount of pleasure in following Amanda into her classroom and watching her in action. Ms. Roberts has crafted a thoroughly literate, utterly delightful puzzler that kept me guessing right up to the climax. This delightful series just keeps getting better and better as new characters arrive on the scene to share Amanda and C.K.'s lives, and I'm really looking forward to spending more time with Gabby and Boy.
Rating:
Summary: A Delightful Addition to a Solid Series
Review: It's official! Series heroine Amanda Pepper and her long-time, ex-cop lover, C.K. Mackenzie have finally decided to commit matrimony. On top of moonlighting with C.K. as private investigators to help keep the wolf from the door while C.K. works on his PhD in criminology, now all she has to do is face up to the pressures of a new term at Philly Prep while bracing herself for a close encounter of the first kind with C. K.'s unconventional parents and pacifying her own demanding family anent her as yet up-in-the-air wedding plans. What Amanda really doesn't need when the novel opens is the added complication of overbearing, reluctant mother-in-law-to-be Claire Fairchild who hires them to do a background check of her wealthy son Leo's enigmatic new fiancee, Emmie Cade, and suddenly winds up very dead because someone has decided to call a halt to their investigation by poisoning her. In for a penny...Amanda doggedly tracks down Emmie's past only to discover that it's a checkered one indeed. There seem to be way too many loose ends for her to make sense of until a clever killer makes one simple yet fatal slip. Amanda may teach English, but she's enough of a mathematician to add up the pieces that quickly point to the real culprit in the veritable nick of time in the slam-bang finale to this thoroughly engrossing caper. As always, the ex-teacher in me takes an enormous amount of pleasure in following Amanda into her classroom and watching her in action. Ms. Roberts has crafted a thoroughly literate, utterly delightful puzzler that kept me guessing right up to the climax. This delightful series just keeps getting better and better as new characters arrive on the scene to share Amanda and C.K.'s lives, and I'm really looking forward to spending more time with Gabby and Boy.
Rating: 
Summary: An Unforgettable Milestone in the Amanda Pepper Series
Review: The appearance of a new Amanda Pepper novel is always welcome. Anthony Award-winning author Gillian Roberts has gently but skillfully evolved her creation over the course of several novels, molding Pepper into a credible character in improbable situations. Pepper is a full-time high school English teacher and part-time private investigator. The latter occupation is performed with her fiancé, C.K. Mackenzie (the initials, we are informed, don't stand for anything other than C.K.). Amanda and C.K. are fish of separate species out of different ponds. Mackenzie is a Louisiana transplant who runs a private investigation service in Philadelphia, while Pepper is a lifelong resident of the City of Brotherly Love. It is an interesting combination, and when their diverse backgrounds bring them into conflict, it more often than not results in warmth instead of sparks. CLAIRE AND PRESENT DANGER continues the name-game play on words that Roberts initiated a couple of novels back. The Claire in this case is Claire Fairchild, an aristocratic matron in declining health whose son, Leo, is engaged to Emmie Cade. No one knows a thing about Cade --- itself a serious faux breach of Philadelphia society etiquette --- and the worries of the elderly Mrs. Fairchild are compounded when she begins receiving anonymous letters, indicating that her erstwhile daughter-in-law doesn't have just a skeleton in her closet but rather whole graveyards full. Mrs. Fairchild hires Mackenzie's firm to investigate Cade's past. Though the grand dame seems at first to be merely a worrisome busybody, Pepper finds that Cade's past seems to be marked by a sequence of mysterious deaths, name changes, and disappearances. Just when Pepper and Mackenzie are about to present their findings to Mrs. Fairchild, however, the dowager passes, apparently of natural causes. Mackenzie feels that the agency has done its job, and since the client is dead, the matter should come to an end. Pepper, however, is certain that Mrs. Fairchild has been murdered, and was murdered because of the investigation that she initiated. Pepper finds out she is right...and wrong. She has trouble convincing Mackenzie of any intervention until help arrives --- from a most unexpected source. CLAIRE AND PRESENT DANGER is a very well done drawing room mystery novel that sustains reader interest from the first page to the last. Roberts does an excellent job of balancing and conflicting Pepper's personal and both of her professional lives, while keeping the plot of the story memorable and the narrative moving ever so gradually forward. Roberts also manages to draw a parallel between events in the life of one of Pepper's students and Pepper's own past without making it too much of a stretch. An important milestone for Pepper and Mackenzie also occurs in this novel, as does the introduction of at least one character with the potential for significant appearances in the future. CLAIRE AND PRESENT DANGER is ultimately a milestone in the Amanda Pepper series, and is a must-read not only for readers who have been with the series from the beginning, but also for those who are ready to jump on for future journeys. --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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