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Rating: 
Summary: Not a mystery!
Review: A desperately boring tale that is not a mystery. The only mystery is - why was it published? Perhaps the story would resonate with that narrow group of social workers that service older, dying people. Most normal readers will feel cheated.
Rating: 
Summary: Too much message not enough mystery
Review: Anita Servi, the plucky NYC social worker is back. She takes a job working for an organization that serves the elderly and immediately starts falling over dead folks. The author does a fine job portraying old people and draws a believable potrait of the city but the book's message is a heavy lead weight. There was way too much preaching about assisted suicide, and religion. Clea's character is a delight but it was extremely unrealistic, in a city like New York where everyone is obsessed with race that no-one has a problem with Anita and her husband Benno's adoption of her. This is going to be my last Anita Servi book. When I sit down to a mystery, I expect to be entertained, not lectured or bored. There is a lot of good in this author's writing but someone ought to tell her that in fiction it's more important to tell the story than to advance a social theory.
Rating: 
Summary: Anita is my Kind of Gal
Review: I really loved this book! Anita Servi is a delight to hang out with: the way she thinks, her family, her neighborhood, her politics. It's a relief to have a strong, normal woman as the protagonist; a thriller that is neither full of gore and testosterone, nor cutesy sweetness, is a rare find. Tne story grabbed me and kept me up late reading in bed (alas, for too few nights - I wish these books were longer). The level of intelligence in the conflicts and the relationships is gratifying. This is a novel first, and a crime story second. Ms. Marcuse has me hooked; when is the fourth book coming?
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