BOOK REVIEW

Author: Bond, Stephanie

Title: Body movers

In ten words or less: Shallow store clerk and petty criminal brother miss their fugitive parents.

Review: Carlotta and Wesley Wren were abandoned by their parents when their father was accused of embezzlement and jumped bail, leaving with their mother. Carlotta was 18 and Wesley 9 when they left, leaving their children to fend for themselves.
Carlotta overspends her credit cards on designer clothes, steals from her employer, and crashes parties. Wesley doesn't work, hacks into the city computer system, and is in debt to loan sharks for compulsive gambling. They are supposed to be charming and lovable, but they are self-centered and spend money they don't have as if there were no consequences. You want to slap them and tell them to grow up.
They get involved in the murder investigation of Carlotta's former finace's wife. Carlotta is pursued by a hunky detective, a medical examiner with a shady past, and her enormously rich ex-fiance, now a widower. This author is no Janet Evanovich.
Why bother? Don't.

BOOK REVIEW

Author: Barnard, Robert

Title: Last post

In ten words or less: Daughter investigates her dead mother's mysterious past

Review: Eve McNabb returned to her mother's house to put affairs in order upon her mother's death. May McNabb was a well respected school administrator who had raised Eve by herself after the death of her husband. But while Eve was reading condolence letters, she discovers a note that implies a lesbian affair in her mother's past. And, as she hunts down the letter's author, she discovers the truth about her father, also.

Why bother? Barnard, a Diamond Dagger Award winner and author of more than 2 dozen mysteries, does not disappoint.