Hot on the Trail

Rating:
Summary: Guaranteed Enjoyment
Review: Jane Isenberg's newest Bel Barrett mystery "Hot on the Trail" is a page-turner that provides both suspense and laughs. Our witty sleuth is so realistic she feels like an old friend. Many of the situations Bel finds herself in will be very familiar to women over 50, which makes them even more interesting and funny. Just don't start this book when you have a lot of work to do.

Rating:
Summary: Kill the Sidekicks
Review: I haven't really enjoyed this series for the past few installments. However, I did enjoy this one. And that's because the story wasn't overfilled with the annoying sidekicks, Illuminada and Betty.

Both characters have outworn themselves in this series, having turned into a couple of unlikeable, stereotypical caricatures. Illuminada, the impatient Cuban, can't get through a paragraph without throwing out a "chiquita" and looking at her watch. Betty, the controlling African-American, can't get through a paragraph without throwing out a "girlfriend" and barking out orders. These two got old a long time ago, and the series is just so much more enjoyable when Bel is interacting with Sol, Ma, Sofia, Wendy, her kids and her students.

Hopefully the author has realized this and the series will continue in a positive manner, as it did with this installment.

Rating:
Summary: charming romantic amateur sleuth mystery
Review: Tenured Professor Bel Barrett carries a full load of classes at the River Edge Community College in Jersey City, but she takes on even more work when she intervenes to teach a memoir writing class at the Senior Center. Her live-in-lover Sol wants her to set a wedding date and start making plans but Bel finds herself putting him off because the thought of planning a wedding exhausts her. As a post-menopause woman, Bel has stopped using the estrogen potion and has trouble maintaining bladder control.

While she deals with all these demands, a student in her class Flora Tomaselli tells Bel that fellow student Dom is dead. He went up to the roof in his pajamas, fell down, and froze to death. Flora also thinks her father was murdered by her uncle Emilio who owed him a large sum of money and wants Bel to prove it. Bel who always comes alive during criminal investigations agrees but Emilio has an airtight alibi and there are suspects closer to home.

Bel Barrett does for Hoboken what Stephanie Plum does for Trenton. This is an upbeat amateur sleuth tale in which the major characters are in their fifties. Jane Isenberg makes it clear that life does not stop once a person reaches the half century mark; it just gets better. If the heroine is any example that is certainty true because she has a lust for life and an appreciation of it that younger people don't have. HOT ON THE TRAIL is a charming romantic amateur sleuth mystery.

Harriet Klausner