Murder Down the Shore: A Jersey Shore Mystery

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Read
Review: Anne Hardaway is nostalgic. Her grandmother has recently died and she wishes to see her mother's side of the family also. She invites them all to a reunion in Oceanside Heights. Not all respond, but she is delighted to hear from some of her favorite cousins. They made her trials with an early onset Alzheimer's afflicted mother a little more bearable. It has been a long time since they all got together. Her overbearing Aunt Hannah also is coming, but they decide to have a good time anyway. On the surface all the cousins seem to be well adjusted and successful, but are they really? Aunt Hannah has picked up a con man for a boyfriend and her son is in trouble again. Aunt Hannah calls Anne asking for help about adoptions. When she arrives at the house, her cousin Kim is running out the door in terror and Aunt Hannah is inside stabbed to death. Anne has to find out who killed her and why.

I really enjoyed this one. Anne has quite a cast of characters in her family and it was interesting to find out exactly who they are. The mystery was really interesting and fairly difficult to solve. I am looking forward to the next one.

Rating:
Summary: Anne plans a family reunion, not quite this way
Review: Anne Hardaway is nostalgic. Her grandmother has recently died and she wishes to see her mother's side of the family also. She invites them all to a reunion in Oceanside Heights. Not all respond, but she is delighted to hear from some of her favorite cousins. They made her trials with an early onset Alzheimer's afflicted mother a little more bearable. It has been a long time since they all got together. Her overbearing Aunt Hannah also is coming, but they decide to have a good time anyway. On the surface all the cousins seem to be well adjusted and successful, but are they really? Aunt Hannah has picked up a con man for a boyfriend and her son is in trouble again. Aunt Hannah calls Anne asking for help about adoptions. When she arrives at the house, her cousin Kim is running out the door in terror and Aunt Hannah is inside stabbed to death. Anne has to find out who killed her and why.

I really enjoyed this one. Anne has quite a cast of characters in her family and it was interesting to find out exactly who they are. The mystery was really interesting and fairly difficult to solve. I am looking forward to the next one.

Rating:
Summary: Mildly entertaining series, but lacking nitpicky accuracy
Review: Beth Sherman's Jersey Shore mysteries, set in a fictionalized Ocean Grove, NJ, with forays into a thinly-veiled Asbury Park, NJ, really had my hopes raised. I have a fascination for books set in my home state, & thought I'd found an equivilent to the excellent Stephanie Plum series. The mysteries are logically plotted & keep you guessing; the books are also darker than your typical "quickie mysteries".

However, there are just too many small-but-annoying errors for me to rate the series "excellent". The main character, Anne, mentions repeatedly that she has lived in her oceanside house all her life-- she's 41 in the latest-- and she inherited it from her deceased parents. Yet her off-&-on work of freelance ghostwriting how-to books often leaves her worried about paying her mortgage. What? How long a mortgage did her parents take out, 50 years? Shouldn't it have been paid in full before now? In any case, an oceanfront house on the Jersey Shore, even a rundown one like Anne's, would likely have property taxes in the 5 digits, yet taxes are never mentioned.

The series has some continuity errors. Anne's mother suffered from Alzheimer's; one remembrance has her dragging the damask sofa outside & putting a for sale sign on it, yet another time the episode is related as the mother dragging it out for the trash, as if the author couldn't keep her "crazy mother" stories straight.

Another odd thing is that Anne's eyes change color midway through the series; my copies of the early books give her eyecolor as green, while in the later ones she has bright, brilliant, sky-blue eyes.

Murder Down the Shore has one of the more irritating picky errors: Anne has a set of Henckel knives which figure prominently in the plot, namely, the 8-inch chef knife. However, the characters continually refer to this knife set as "the steak knives". No one should confuse an 8-inch Henckel chef knife for a "steak knife", nor to refer to a set of Henckel kitchen knives as a "steak knife set". Steak knives are uniform in size, like table knives; it's an odd loose end someone should have tightened up.

There are some odd references to New Jersey, too, which makes me think the author doesn't really know the state too well. Anne refers several times to swimming in the "ice-cold ocean"-- in the summer. Sorry, ice-cold summer oceanwater is for New England, not NJ; in August & Sept., the months referred to, the ocean is rarely anything but balmy. In an earlier book in the series, she also refers to an "out-of-season October northeaster". Nor'easters do not occur only during the winter as the author seems to think; they can, and do, occur anytime during the year. She also mentions the wild thunder & lightning during this storm: also unlikely. Nor'easters are not usually electrical storms. I suppose it COULD happen, but anyone who has ridden out such a storm would find it very unusual.
One of the earlier books in the series also has references to playing in the "mud" at water's edge: a dead giveaway to the presence of an out-of-stater. I have never, EVER heard a native Jerseyan call sand "mud".

These things would probably not bother someone who isn't as attuned to detail as myself, but they DO bother me. These and the presence of enough oddly-constructed phrases throughout make me suspect there wasn't tight enough editing of the books. Beth Sherman seems to have a real affection for Ocean Grove; she probably had a pleasant vacation or several there. Sadly, this affection doesn't carry enough realism to convince this life-long New Jersey resident who has spent many, many, many seasons "down the shore".

Rating:
Summary: New Mystery, New Anne Hardaway
Review: I love the Anne Hardaway mystery series. I'm not exactly sure why -- it's not really one of those 'cozy' small town mysteries, nor is it one that's filled with wacky, quirky characters whose antics amuse one no end. Indeed, some of the books in this series have been angst filled and rather stark and dour in tone. So why am I such a fan? As far as I can tell, I like this series mainly because of it's detecting heroine, Anne Hardaway. A struggling ghostwriter (in her late 30s, and a bit of a loner), trying hard to make ends meet and who still lives in the same house she grew up in, Anne is an entirely appealing character, that most readers are bound to find completely engaging. And the mysteries in this series have (so far) been rather compelling and interesting ones as well.

Things are finally beginning to look up for Anne. She's currently working on book of advice for pet owners, and the authour she's currently working with has (so far) turned out to be an absolute joy. And best of all, her relationship with Detective Mark Trasker is going rather well too. So why would Anne want to borrow trouble by deciding to host a family reunion? The death of her grandmother, Betty Hardaway, four months ago has left Anne with the need to reconnect with family. And so, Anne has decided to invite her wealthy Great-aunt Hannah (from her mother's side of the family), along with the cousins she grew up with -- Henry (Great-aunt Hannah's son), Cece, Nora (Anne's favourite cousin), Alex and Millie. In her mind, it seems like a good idea: the family would be reunited again, there'd be lots of fun and laughter, with the sun and beach of Ocean Heights as the backdrop to the whole event. The reality however includes Great-aunt Hannah's new 'boyfriend' whose supercilious behaviour manages to make everyone's teeth grate, and the unpleasant fact that Hannah and her son are not speaking to one another. Things take an especially nasty turn however when Hannah is found stabbed to death on the beach, and the murder weapon turns out to be one of Anne's knives! Because of Trasker's relationship with Anne, he recuses himself from the case, which turns out to be a really bad thing for Anne. Because the detective in charge of the case happens to be small minded bully who is only all too willing to believe that Anne killed Hannah for the money she was to have inherited from her. With her freedom on the line, Anne has no choice but to start looking into Hannah's life as well as those of her cousins'as she tries to figure who set up to take the blame for Hannah's murder. What Anne discovers will both sadden and chill as she tries to figure out which one of her relatives murdered Hannah.

The mystery unfolded at a brisk, swift and smooth pace, and there were enough false trails and red herring suspects to keep most mystery addicts happily glued to the pages. My only compliant was that I wished the novel had been a longer one, so that there could have been even more plot exposition and so that certain characters could have been even more developed. Other than that "Murder Down the Shore" was a really fun read.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Read
Review: Picked up this gem while on vacation at the Jersey shore. It was a nice quick read that kept me guessing until the end. Highly recommend it.