Death Tidies Up

Rating:
Summary: Another Mess To Clean Up
Review: Charlotte LaRue owns Maid For A Day in New Orleans, LA. Charlotte and Janet, Chere, and Emily, who work for her, clean the new apartments in the renovated Devilier house. Drew Bergeron is discovered dead in one of the apartments. Charlotte faints after he is found. Drew was supposed to have died 2 years ago.

Charlotte's niece, Judith, who is the detective on this case, encourages Charlotte to contact her son Hank who is a doctor. Judith calls Hank the next day. He sets up an appointment with a fellow doctor for his mother for a physical. She is feeling tired and forgetful. She begins worrying that she has some terrible disease. She is also very nervous about her upcoming 60th birthday.

Through families Charlotte cleans for, she gathers information and does some sleuthing. There are plenty of suspects. Charlotte believes in not gossiping about her customers, so she finds it difficult deciding when she should contact Judith with information and when she needs to stay quiet. Sometimes this puts her in dangerous situations.

This author has done a great job creating the characters in this series. I found myself really feeling for Charlotte in her concern for her health and her frustration with turning 60. It is all very believable and well constructed. This series is definitely a quick read. You will want to keep reading until you get to the end.

I like the relationship developing between Charlotte and Louis, Judith's soon to be ex-partner. I hope this will develop even further in future books.

This is the second book in this series. I highly recommend this series. It is definitely a great cozy.

Rating:
Summary: A maid in New Orleans helps investigate murder
Review: Charlotte LaRue owns Maid For A Day in New Orleans, LA. Charlotte and Janet, Chere, and Emily, who work for her, clean the new apartments in the renovated Devilier house. Drew Bergeron is discovered dead in one of the apartments. Charlotte faints after he is found. Drew was supposed to have died 2 years ago.

Charlotte's niece, Judith, who is the detective on this case, encourages Charlotte to contact her son Hank who is a doctor. Judith calls Hank the next day. He sets up an appointment with a fellow doctor for his mother for a physical. She is feeling tired and forgetful. She begins worrying that she has some terrible disease. She is also very nervous about her upcoming 60th birthday.

Through families Charlotte cleans for, she gathers information and does some sleuthing. There are plenty of suspects. Charlotte believes in not gossiping about her customers, so she finds it difficult deciding when she should contact Judith with information and when she needs to stay quiet. Sometimes this puts her in dangerous situations.

This author has done a great job creating the characters in this series. I found myself really feeling for Charlotte in her concern for her health and her frustration with turning 60. It is all very believable and well constructed. This series is definitely a quick read. You will want to keep reading until you get to the end.

I like the relationship developing between Charlotte and Louis, Judith's soon to be ex-partner. I hope this will develop even further in future books.

This is the second book in this series. I highly recommend this series. It is definitely a great cozy.

Rating:
Summary: Another Mess To Clean Up
Review: Charlotte LaRue, owner of Maid For A Day in New Orleans has two problems. One is that she hasn't been feeling too well lately and the other is she's about to turn the big 60.

But both of these seem unimportant when while cleaning the old Devilier House, which has been converted to apartments, her cleaning crew stumbles across a body.

Being braver than her crew, Charlotte goes to the closet to check and realizes that the half-dressed man sitting on the floor is indeed dead. And even though he's wearing a purple Mardi Gras mask, there's something familiar about him.

But even she was shocked to hear that the dead man was Drew Bergeron, who supposedly died in a plane crash years before. Where had he been, and why had he come back.

Charlotte couldn't help wondering if his death had anything to do with the "accidental" death of Bill Hebert, husband of Marion Hebert, one of her clients. Bill had been fired by Drew years before and had fell into a depression over it. Marion still blames that firing for Bill not paying as close attention as he should have to his new job and that was what caused the accident.

Or maybe it was the secret that Marion, Bill and Drew shared, going back 20 years which was the real problem.

Charlotte tries to solve the mystery, before the killer can kill again.

Highlights:

I really like the relationship between Charlotte and her family friends, especially her niece, Judith who's a Police Detective and her son, Hank, who's a doctor.

She has a great just beginning, but not quite a romance, yet starting with Detective Louis Thibodeaux, who is getting ready to retire and is living in the other half of Charlotte's Duplex while he's building his new house. If you read the first book in this series, "Maid For Murder" these two would have been the least likely people to have ever gotten together.

Lowlights:

The mystery. I figured out who did it and why halfway through the book and then spent the rest of the book, thinking, it must be a red herring because it can't be that easy. But it was.

Too many loose ends. Why did Drew leave. You have theories, but no one ever comes right out says this is why Drew disappeared. How did he do it, and why did he come back?

There are several things the killer does that don't make sense and they're not explained, I can't say what they are because it would give away who the killer was.

Overall it was an nice read. Nothing that makes you really excited to get the next book in the series. But good enough that you want to read the next one.

Rating:
Summary: attractive amateur sleuth-police procedural
Review: In New Orleans, though she fears her upcoming sixtieth birthday because that sounds old, Charlotte LaRue feels quite good about her cleaning company, Maid for a Day. Her small firm won a contract from realtor Marian Hebert to clean the renovated Devilier Apartments before the tenants take residency.

However, the cleaning crew finds a dead body in a closet in one of the rooms. The police led by Charlotte's niece and her tenant arrive to investigate. The corpse turns out to be Drew Bergerson, who allegedly died two years ago in a plane crash into the Gulf of Mexico. Though told to stay out, Charlotte wonders if this death is connected to the supposed accidental explosion nine months ago that killed Marian's husband as she tries to sweep clean the homicide in her own unique manner.

DEATH TIDIES UP is an attractive amateur sleuth-police procedural that reader will relish because the engaging staff, especially the charming star, makes for fun reading. The cozy style who-done-it will hook the audience because of the warm cast though the answers to the murder mystery seem strange. Barbara Colley provides an entertaining cozy that will send the audience seeking the first LaRue novel, MAID FOR MURDER, which is being re-released as a paperback in January.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: attractive amateur sleuth-police procedural
Review: In New Orleans, though she fears her upcoming sixtieth birthday because that sounds old, Charlotte LaRue feels quite good about her cleaning company, Maid for a Day. Her small firm won a contract from realtor Marian Hebert to clean the renovated Devilier Apartments before the tenants take residency.

However, the cleaning crew finds a dead body in a closet in one of the rooms. The police led by Charlotte's niece and her tenant arrive to investigate. The corpse turns out to be Drew Bergerson, who allegedly died two years ago in a plane crash into the Gulf of Mexico. Though told to stay out, Charlotte wonders if this death is connected to the supposed accidental explosion nine months ago that killed Marian's husband as she tries to sweep clean the homicide in her own unique manner.

DEATH TIDIES UP is an attractive amateur sleuth-police procedural that reader will relish because the engaging staff, especially the charming star, makes for fun reading. The cozy style who-done-it will hook the audience because of the warm cast though the answers to the murder mystery seem strange. Barbara Colley provides an entertaining cozy that will send the audience seeking the first LaRue novel, MAID FOR MURDER, which is being re-released as a paperback in January.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Cute Series
Review: This is a cute little series, which is good for a night of light reading. If you're looking for an in-depth mystery, then it's not for you.

The problem I do have with the series is that Charlotte constantly talks about not butting into the personal lives of her clients, and how confidentiality and discretion are so important to her that they're grounds for immediate termination of her employees. Yet she goes right ahead and sticks her nose into things and places where it doesn't belong, such as tracking down BJ at school and sneaking into Sam's bedroom to snoop while supposedly using the bathroom. The author should let up a bit on how goody-goody Charlotte is if she's going to do these things and get herself so involved with her clients.

Also, one discrepancy from the first book bothered me. In Book 1, Judith didn't want Charlotte to let the victim's wife know that she's her niece. In this book, when Judith shows up at the house where Charlotte is working to talk to the owner, the owner stares at the two of them and Charlotte comments on how she probably recognized the resemblence between them, since she and Judith are often mistaken for mother and daughter. Shouldn't the wife in Book 1 have noticed this same resemblence if it's so strong, considering she had much more dealings with Judith than the homeowner in Book 2?

I look forward to Book 3.