Reviews

Valerie Cooper lost her husband, Tony, the love of her life, in an on-the-job accident as a fireman a few years ago leaving her to raise their twin sons alone. She was very involved in activities when the boys were in school but they have now gone away to college and Valerie is dealing with an empty nest and looking for ways to fill her days. Thankfully she has a great friend and next-door neighbor, Lorna who does her best to keep Valerie busy.

Then Valerie receives a puzzling letter from an attorney telling her she has been named in Tony’s uncle Arthur’s will. She didn’t even know Tony had an uncle, Arthur. After meeting with the lawyer she learns he had quite an estate. A trust has been set up for her sons and she has inherited a majority interest in an antique store, New Orleans Fine Antiques. Not knowing much about antiques she is excited to learn and looks forward to working there. But everyone is not happy about her inheritance.

Collette, a real estate agent has been after Valerie to sell her house claiming she has a perfect buyer. Valerie and Collette’s sons all attended the same school and while they worked together, they were definitely not friends. And she really does not want to sell her house.

After several tries to dissuade Collette, someone else takes care of the problem. When Valerie attends a Mardi Gras Masquerade party with Lorna she finds Collette’s dead body outside of the event. A jeweled dagger stuck in her chest. A dagger from New Orleans Fine Antiques, Valerie’s new inheritance.

Now high on the suspect list Valerie must do everything she can to clear her name and reveal the real killer before she becomes their next victim.

I really loved the way this story started.

The first rule of life in New Orleans is Any time you leave your house not looking your best, you’ll run into your nemesis.

What a great first line. You just know this has happened before to main character Valerie Cooper and it is about to happen again. I could tell immediately I was going to enjoy this author’s sense of humor and was looking forward to a story full of it. Sadly that was not the case. I liked Valerie but the humor wasn’t at the level I had expected. She spent a lot of time lamenting about her life and things her husband didn’t tell her or things she didn’t care to know at the time but he really should have told her anyway. I also hated that she picked up on phrase from Collette and carried it and repeated it over and over again. A lot of this was set up by the premise of the story, which I loved, an unexpected inheritance that was going to change her life and connections to the people involved. It was just offputting the way it was dwelled on over and over again.

I did love Valerie’s friend Lorna. (Not Lauren as stated on the book cover text and the online synopsis.) A well-known author that loved to live life to the fullest even with a mother that drove her crazy with her daily calls. Lorna is a confident woman who doesn’t care what other people think. She is funny, kind, has no trouble speaking her mind, and is a great friend to Valerie. At the masquerade party, she was drinking bad wine and out on the dance floor having a great time while Valerie was a wallflower, sitting in a corner complaining about her sore feet and eavesdropping on other guests. Okay, what she heard started the ball rolling to finding a dead body but the girl needs to learn how to have some fun.

Surprisingly that ball rolling didn’t happen until more than halfway through the book. This story had a clear case of first story in the series – itis. The author had to introduce all the characters, set up their connections, and give enough of a backstory for the story to go in the direction he wanted. Then he had to get to the murder and its aftermath. Because of that, it is really hard to plot out a complex mystery within the pages allowed. This one was really easy to solve. We knew early who the victim would be and what weapon would be used. I found myself just waiting for it to happen. Then as suspects were revealed and questions were asked the twists turned out to be very minor leaving the Whodunit factor a little lacking.

I did enjoy the setting of the Big Easy, a place filled with possibilities of murder and mayhem. The information about the Krewes was very interesting. The descriptions of all the places were nice but sometimes the minute details got to be a little much.

All that being said, there are some good bones here. We now know the characters and there is plenty of room for development. This gives the author the opportunity to give readers a slam-bang mystery with a lot of depth and twists in book two. I would like to visit these characters again to see what happens next. I do hope the humor found at the beginning of this book shines all the way through the next one and that there is less repetition and detail of known things.

A Streetcar Named Murder is a satisfactory start for this series. I hope the author pulls everything together for the next installment and the publisher fixes Lorna’s name in the synopsis of this one soon.

annarella's review

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5.0

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and loved the descriptions of New Orleans and how it talks about living in Big Easy.
That said I loved Valerie and her friends, hated the bad guys and had a lot of fun.
I know I loved a book when i check when a new one will be out and what the author wrote before.
A solid mystery, an entertaining story, a complex plot involving secrets from the past and old family feuds.
Loved the storytelling and the style of writing.
Valerie is a no nonsense woman and doesn't feel the need to risk her life senslessly.
A well plotted and fast paced story, Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

cgonya1's review

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mysterious medium-paced

3.5

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