My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

I definitely don’t expect you to cook, Morgan, I don’t want to add food poisoning to his list of problems. He has enough without forcing your cooking onto him.

She felt her skin crawl, this guy had to be in his late fifties, with a receding hairline and a comb-over. Thick wire-rimmed glasses made his small, narrow eyes look as if they wouldn’t be out of place on a rat. If she had to pick a serial killer out of a seventies’ line-up, he would be the one standing nestled between Dahmer and Nielsen; he gave her the creeps.

My Review:

Another well-crafted, smartly paced,  and unpredictable case for the superior detecting skills of Morgan Brookes. No serial killer gets past her spidey senses. However, this time, the culprit was not even on her radar, or mine, for that matter. As always, Ms. Phifer’s writing was absorbing and easy to fall into, with lots of red herrings and misdirection to keep us scratching our heads, and our curiosity well and truly poked. I continue to enjoy this series and look forward to her next installment.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

It would have been charming if it weren’t the place where dreams go to die.

Agnes was a prickly woman of retirement age whose hobbies appeared to be telling other people what was wrong with them and sucking on lemons.

There was a poster hanging on the back wall that said JESUS ALREADY KNOWS EVERYTHING YOU DON’T WANT YOUR MOMMA TO FIND OUT.

Miranda was perpetually uptight about most things. Punctuality was just a lone grain of sand on the seashore of her pet peeves.

Let me check the temperature of Hell and get back to you.

I loiter at the diabetic supply store looking for my next sugar momma.

There were two reasons I didn’t hang out with women. They could turn vicious in a pack environment, and I had an aversion to drama.

The world is full of trolls who want to steal your happiness to make up for their own misery.

Apparently, they can’t diagnose that until I’m dead, which sounds like a load of crap telling someone you have a disease that will kill you and we’ll let you know for sure after it does.

My Review:

I vastly enjoyed this witty tale. The writing was well-paced, populated with the most quirkiest of characters, and laced together with world-class snark. I had highlighted so many favorite quotes that it was rather painful to pare down the list to include in my review. This was just my first date with the crafty scribe known as Libby Klein, but we are going to be an ongoing item if she can continue to churn out more cleverly penned tales on par with Vice and Virtue. I am eager to see what she conjures up as the next adventure for this tribe of eccentric snoops.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Paranoia is different. It is a slippery, malignant thing– feared by those who know of its presence, an invisible threat to those who don’t.

I don’t remember what happiness sounds or tastes like, or how it feels between my fingers.

‘What if’ has been an enemy of mine for as long as I’m able to remember, standing in doorways to stop me passing, whispering in my ear at night to keep me awake. It has been the sibling I never had, competitive and sneaky, tripping me up then feigning innocence when I fall. Now, it stands here beside me, taunting me with everything that could go wrong.

My Review:

This was a tense and disconcerting read. But I am not a fan of angst, and I didn’t like these people; they were all rather heinous. Nor could I fully forgive them even after the driving force of their problems was revealed. But while I found them to be contemptible creatures who had done inexcusable things to each other and had knowingly neglected their child, I was unreasonably curious to find out what was going to happen next. Victoria Jenkins has penned a compelling tale.

Mystery at Hideaway House
(Eve Mallow Mystery #14)
by Clare Chase

Favorite Quotes:

He looked at Eve as though she was something he’d just sneezed into a tissue.

He wore a smart suit but still managed to look slightly dishevelled. His hair stuck out at odd angles and his glasses looked as though they’d been dropped recently and possibly sat on.

My Review:

This was a complicated and well-plotted mystery that kept me looping around in circles. I was chasing my tail as I pondered so many suspects and what seemed to be red herring clues. Ms. Chase is a clever one and may well be an evil genius, as I marveled at how well she dovetailed all her brilliantly scattered pieces together in a realistic fashion.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

He was thin back at uni, but now his eyes have sunk into their sockets, making them look like the marbles in a pinball machine.

I know the people they used to be. But they’ve all changed. It’s like someone took a magnifying glass and ramped up all their worst qualities, making them clearer, brighter, louder.

All at once, she can’t bear the thought that she has touched a dead body. She imagines all the germs, all the flies and maggots, and feels desperate to scrub it off her skin. She fears all that death is catching.

The sympathy she once had for him is wearing thinner by the day, like a big ball of string that is being stretched and stretched until it’s just the thinnest fibres left.

…she sees the shadow of death hovering over her like a grey cloud. It’s an icy, unnerving presence that seeps into her bones. At times, the pain is so relentless, she hears their voices– the dead ones– all shouting at once, making it impossible to pick out what any of them are saying. It’s as if they’re trapped in a never-ending loop, their voices echoing and overlapping. She tries to block them out, but their presence is impossible to ignore. Their spirits refuse to rest in peace.

My Review:

These were horrible people thinking horrible thoughts about and doing horrible things to each other, over many years, until it ended, horribly.  I did not like them at all.  They were immature, selfish, warped, and just toxic creatures.  Yet this devious scribbler planted a worm in my gray matter, and I was hooked.  The little pea in my brain needed to know what was going to happen to them and who was killing them off one by one, and who would be the last one standing, as there always has to be at one left to tell the tale.  I would never have guessed this outcome, my hypothesis went in a different direction.  I love it when that happens.