A Very Eligible Corpse (New Mystery Series)

Rating:
Summary: Shows tremendous promise
Review: I picked up this book because I'd exhausted all of the Southern Sisters mysteries by Anne Carroll George. I loved the mysterious adventures of those two ladies of a certain age in Birmingham and was hoping that Hannah and Kiki would fill the void. While the author was very adept at creating a sense of time and place, and the story itself was taut and interesting, I must agree with the other reviewers who singled Kiki out for scorn. Loud, shallow and man-hungry, she was a particularly silly and unattractive protagonist. (Her opposite number in the Anne Carroll George books was Mary Alice, also loud, shallow and man-hungry, but also a possessed of uncommon common sense when the chips were down.) Still, there was enough wit and skill on display in this first effort that I may give others in the series a try. Maybe Kiki will be refined a bit more and will begin to grow on me.

Rating:
Summary: More than a few chuckles...
Review: I will admit, this book is a guilty pleasure...I really wanted to dislike it since the set-up sounded a bit tired...2 sisters in their early sixties living in Marin County...Hannah-the more prim and proper of the 2. A bit more cynical and logical than her sister Kiki, a bit of a boozy flirt. Kiki's newest 'suitor' Arnold Lempke in found dead in his prizewinning rosebushes, and after the fight he and Kiki had the night previous, Kiki is now a prime suspect. Her sister Hannah comes to the rescue, determined to solve the identity of the real murderer, and get sis Kiki out of jail. This book was a real nice surprise. Hannah reminds me a bit of Magdalena Yoder (Pennsylvania Dutch mystery series by Tamar Myers) with her tongue-in-cheek humor and acerbic remarks. A fast and funny read for this first in a new series. I really enjoyed Annie Griffin's book and look forward to reading the 2nd!

Rating:
Summary: Not my kind of gals!
Review: Let me begin by saying I love to read murder mysteries that feature older women in the role of part-time sleuth, so when I came across this new series by Annie Griffin, I bought all three before I had even read the first. What a disappointment and waste of money.

For starters, none of the characters are the kind I would enjoy as friends or neighbors or could really care about. Kiki, overly sexed and brainless, is surely the most grotesque female that I have ever met on printed page. Hannah, the part-time sleuth, cast as her sober, intelligent older sister and the brains of the crime-detecting duo, is less offensive yet just as superficial. What Griffins gives us is a collection of women characters, who are, for the most part, cardboard caricatures: the New Age psychic, the aging radical feminist, the ambitious society matron. It's as if she said, I need one of those, one of those, and throw that in too when she created them.

I did get through "A Very Eligible Corpse," wanting to be fair. After all, this was the first in the series. Surely it could only improve. Went on to "Tall, Dark, and Handsome." Just as in the first, the corpse is a Kiki paramour. Skipped to the last pages to see how it wound up before I put it aside. Didn't even start "Date with the Perfect Dead Man" when I read on the jacket blurb that this time Hannah is the suspect. Give me a break--I am willing to suspend disbelief, but surely an author needs more imagination than to have every one of the victims fall so conveniently within the reach of the sisters.

Sorry but I pass on this series. Will stick with and even re-read with intense pleasure, Simon Brett's Mrs. Pargeter, Dorothy Gilman's Mrs. Pollifax, and Hazel Holt's Mrs. Malory. These are women of substance, depicted with skill, intelligence, and comic flair!