Category: Review Thursday

All Chaz Smith wants to do is open his business in a nice area and help bring some money to the neighborhood. Does it matter that it’s a strip club? It matters to their neighbors, who launch a social media blitz against him, and to the mayor, who is doing his best to make sure that Chaz doesn’t get the permits he needs to open his business. Continue reading “Book Review: Secret Lives and Private Eyes” →

This is my first review of 2015! How many books have you read so far already this year? If you need another, I highly recommend you pick up Macdeath on Amazon today!

Ivy Meadows is an aspiring actress in Phoenix, although at the moment, she’s trying to keep from completely falling apart (thanks to the heat, a broken car air conditioner, a broken shoe heel, which forces her to wear a leopard spotted leotard) before her audition for Macbeth. She stumbles and tumbles her way through the audition, and wins a coveted spot in the production.

However, the director’s vision of the play and what the Bard intended are two different things. And while the play resembles a circus on the stage, the real show is behind the scenes. Many of the cast and crew have worked together before, and not all the memories are fond ones. One of the actors, Simon Black, asks Ivy help him stay sober during their time together. She doesn’t believe she’s the right one for the job, but agrees to help him.

Everything goes well during the three weeks of rehearsals, but on opening night, someone says “Macbeth” backstage before the show. Everyone knows you don’t say that name because of the curse. But everything goes well, and Ivy even gets a heart-stopping, room-spinning kiss from Jason, the lead actor playing the King. When she goes to see Simon before leaving for the night, she finds him dead in his dressing room. It appears that poor Simon fell off the wagon and drank himself to death. The curse lives!

With the help of Uncle Bob, a private investigator, and Detective Pinkstaff, Ivy has to figure out the complicated relationships between Simon, the cast and crew to find a murderer. But can she do it without falling victim to the Macbeth curse?

As a theater lover (and former actress, gofer, assistant director and director), I fell in love with this book right away. I love Ivy; she’s a klutzy gal after my own heart. The story is well-written, the descriptions are so detailed that I swear at times I could smell the greasepaint, and Ms. Brown kept me guessing until the very end. For those readers that are unfamiliar with what goes on backstage at a show, this will them an unobstructed view of how hard everyone works to make it a success. I had a love/hate relationship with several characters, and I was rooting for one particular character to hook up with Ivy (I’m still hoping!). There wasn’t anything about this book that I didn’t like (I loved it all!), and I am waiting with baited breath for The Sound of Murder, coming out this fall. I would definitely recommend this wonderful book to anyone who has ever spent time in theater or drama classes. This is one book I will be re-reading in the near future!

It’s Book Review Thursday. Come back each week to get a peek inside what authors I love and what storylines inspire me. 

Pepper Millhouse is an agent to the stars, and they adore her because of how hard she works for them. Her latest star, Amber Marx, has just won a major award, and seems poised for a breakout year.

But there are people in the industry who don’t appreciate the way Pepper operates.  A couple of hours after the awards show, Pepper dies under mysterious circumstances in her hot tub…alone.

Carol Childs is a rookie reporter for KCHC, a divorcee with a teenage son, Charlie, and she has started a new relationship with a smoking hot FBI agent, Eric Langdon. She’s working hard at the station to prove she can be a good reporter. And she thinks she’s finally got her big break when her neighbor, Samantha Millhouse, bangs on her door early in the morning and breaks the news that her aunt, Pepper, is dead.

Sam’s relationship with her aunt wasn’t a good one, and Sam has made her feelings about her aunt crystal clear to anyone who will listen. Pepper managed to alienate almost everyone who knew her, including Sam’s twin sister, Sarah. In fact, the suspect list is so long, it seems unlikely the police will ever be able to solve her murder.

Kari, one of Carol’s co-workers, speculates on the air that perhaps someone is trying to kill off the top people at Pepper’s agency in a power play to take over. Two other agents died under mysterious circumstances just weeks before Pepper’s death. Kari seems to point the finger at Sam, and when the will reveals that Pepper left the agency to Sam, her sister makes it clear that she believes Sam is a murderer.

Carol doesn’t believe it, but her boss, Tyler, is reluctant to let her handle the story. He assigns her a story about waterless urinals on the UCLA campus. But when she gets there, Eric is already there because of a missing girl case. He introduces her to Misty Dawn, a psychic who led the police to the girl’s body.

When Sam is arrested for Pepper’s murder, Carol is shocked. The autopsy results reveal that Pepper was poisoned, and Carol begins to suspect Misty Dawn, who has a connection to Amber Marx. Sam is also charged with the murders of the other two agents from the agency, and then a young star with connections to the agency dies on a flight overseas. Is her friend Sam a serial killer, or is someone else trying to frame her?

The stakes become dangerously high when Charlie’s life is in danger, and Carol has to figure out the ending to this crazy, murderous script before someone else dies. But will she be able to toss out all the red herrings before she is taken off the air – permanently?

Nancy Cole Silverman delivers a delightful novel with plenty of twists and turns. Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, she throws a wrench into the works that makes you scratch your head in frustration. Carol is a good, strong woman with a wonderful supporting cast, and while I found Misty Dawn to be the wackiest woman in the world, I’m kind of hoping Silverman brings her back in the future. Shadow of Doubt is a well-written mystery with an ending that will leave you gasping in shock, and waiting to tune in for the next story.

Shadow of Doubt is available for purchase on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere!