While the title seems pitched to Tom Jones fans, this mystery will appeal more to fans of lighthearted romantic cozies with...
The life of a mousy rest home receptionist is upended when she attends a Tom Jones tribute artist festival and murder intervenes.
Ellie Overton is 28 and single since the current crop of soul-patched hipsters can’t hold a candle to the flamboyant macho man of her dreams, singer Tom Jones. When a Tom Jones Festival, featuring dozens of wannabes with varying degrees of talent, swings through her home town of Pankey, Pa. (along with sister city Hankey), Ellie decides to fork over some of her hard-earned pay as general dogsbody at the Finger Rest Home for a weekly pass. To her surprise, her childhood frenemy Happy Carlisle is there—married to Flip Henderson, one of the top contenders. The first night’s entertainment is cut short when the other top contender, Stan McCann, crashes through the stage steps and breaks a leg in the latest of a series of “accidents” plaguing tribute artist contests. Ellie returns the next night with a carload of rest home residents; Happy sets her up with an eliminated contestant, Evan Salter, but the date goes quickly south when Evan is found standing over Flip’s dead body with the murder weapon in his hand. Ellie’s life becomes increasingly complicated when her boss, Mr. Finger, holds her responsible for bringing his clients into a dangerous situation. She feels compelled to help Evan, who claims to be innocent, flee the police, while Happy latches onto Ellie to cater to her not-particularly-devastated widowhood. Happy’s dweebish brother, Donny, turns out to have matured into an eligible attorney with an unfortunate drinking problem, and sexy police detective Marc Levy does his darnedest to sweep Ellie off her feet. The rest home residents, Mrs. Peachey, Mrs. Hand and Mr. Harvey, along with handyman/driver Jorge, supply insight, support, comic relief and wardrobe advice. Martin (Grace Unexpected, 2012, etc.) has written an amusing cozy/romance, though the title is somewhat misleading: The Tom Jones tribute artist theme isn’t especially vital to the story; it could have taken place at any kind of venue with an element of competition. Murder takes a decided back seat to Ellie’s romantic quandaries, dividing her interest and loyalties among Evan, Donny and Marc, though, in fact, Ellie’s relationships with her elderly charges are the real heart of the story.
While the title seems pitched to Tom Jones fans, this mystery will appeal more to fans of lighthearted romantic cozies with fairly conservative social views.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1620151976
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Booktrope Editions
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.
Pub Date: June 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14059-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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