A Time For Murder, #50 in the Murder She Wrote series, will be released on 11.26.19 and is available for preorder. Congratulations to everyone that made the series be a success.

Amazon / Audiobook / Goodreads

MY REVIEW

Wow, #50 in the Murder She Wrote series and I have enjoyed reading the books and watching the TV reruns. How about you?

We are going back in time to Jessica Fletcher’s first murder investigation, her publisher.

It was the inspiration for Jessica Fletcher becoming a mystery writer, but, more than that, bodies are falling and they all lead back to the high school she used to teach at and the murder of her publisher.

Back and forth we go,

I was led down false paths, following one red herring after another. We have plenty of bodies and suspects making it difficult to find out the why and who and how they are all connected.

I love that I am at 91% and still guessing. Great job Jon!

Well…that was one wild ride to the end. It’s hard to imagine the books still going strong at #50, but Jessica Fletcher and Jon Land keep on giving.

I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of A Time For Murder by Jessica Fletcher & Jon Land.

4 Stars READ MORE HERE

This book was offered through my library's Overdrive app as some sort of Big Read, so I decided to give it a try. It has all of the ingredients for a fun summer book: FBI profiler Kendra Donovan accidentally travels back in time and has to catch a serial killer. If you like trashy books at all then you probably think that premise sounds pretty fun. 

Sadly, the execution is lacking and I quit on this one after 5 chapters. 

1. There are major POV problems. There is a huge difference between an omniscient narrator and an inept writer who constantly head-hops. 

2. Kendra isn't just *any* FBI profiler, because that wouldn't be interesting enough. No, she's the product of two scientists who believe in eugenics and created her in a lab. She's therefore the smartest and most specialist FBI profiler who ever was--indeed, so special that the FBI waived their age requirements and let her join up early. Dear author: no1currr. 

3. Everyone is fucking stupid, including Kendra. She drones on and on about the deadly ricin in the warehouse she and her colleagues are busting into in the first part of the story. Better keep those masks on, right guys? Nope--almost the first thing they do when they breach the warehouse is rip their masks off because the bad guys have flash bombs. Fortunately the ricin they've been so worried about is not Chekhov's ricin, so it ends up not mattering.

4. The author seems to have only a vague idea of how computers work. Kendra leads her team to the bad guy by "tracking his signal," and writing a magic computer program that guesses where he'll go to next, whatever that means. Maybe she's using the Find my Phone app on his iPhone.

5. The pacing sucks. I got through five chapters of a time travel story--guess how much time traveling is done to that point? If you guessed zero then, sadly, you're correct. The author strands us in what is essentially Kendra's backstory for what feels like an eternity. I now understand why this book is 500 pages long.

This one wasn't for me, and I'm a bit envious of people who liked it. I really wanted to be one of those people.  

Lots of new purchases this month guys!

A Murder in Time: A Novel - Julie McElwain 

Sleeping Giants - Sylvain Neuvel 

The Star-Touched Queen - Roshani Chokshi 

The Square Root of Summer - Harriet Reuter Hapgood 

The First Time She Drowned - Kerry Kletter 

And a couple of netgalley titles:

Don't You Cry - Mary Kubica 

And I Darken - Kiersten White 

Currently Reading Updates:

I finally watched the series "The man in the high castle" and it was really good. Naturally, I got both the book and the audio. I'm at the beginning but there are so many differences already.