Organize Your Corpses : Murder and More

Mary Jane Maffini does it again! Another great mystery series!
This series is set in upstate New York, with a fun group of characters and some interesting situations... I never thought that being an professional organizer had such dangerous overtones.

Our heroine, Charlotte Adams, a 5-foot tall professional organizer, who is a bit obsessed with order. Yes, this is a woman who organizes her spice rack. But you will like her anyway. Part of the fun of these books is Charlotte and her group of friends. They were the misfits together in high school, and now that they have grown and Charlotte has come back to her home town it is interesting to see how their relationships have developed.

And Charlotte picks up some new friends along the way - her helper is a multi-pierced young gal with colored hair, but who has a flair for organizing and a good work ethic. And then there is her senior citizen friend Rose, who can be relied on for gossip about her latest suspects and a fresh batch of cookies.

And there is Jack, her best bud, landlord, and pusher of stray dogs. Yep, we have some dogs in this series. The fun part is the dogs are believable and funny. If you like bad dogs that is. They even have their own storyline - Charlotte is determined that they will pass their therapy dog class. And we get to see their progress throughout the stories.

Maybe the best part of these books is Charlotte's job psychology. It is cool to see how she finds out about a person and their habits through what is in their closet. And how much is learned by our messy ways...(But then I thought that was the best part of the old TLC show Clean Sweep.) When I first started this series - I admit I was a bit sceptical about the organizer job part - but I have found that Maffini has really incorporated it smoothly into the story.  Now if I can only get Charlotte to my closets..

So for a good mystery, with some original characters, and a bit of a thrill (in some of the books), a bit of romance, and some dogs, come on over to Charlotte's world. You will have a good time. They are fun reads!

They are best read in order:

Organize Your Corpses (2007)

The Cluttered Corpse (2008)

Death Loves a Messy Desk (2009)

Closet Confidential (2010)

The Busy Woman’s Guide to Murder (2011) 

For more on Maffini's other series - look here.

Mama Does Time

Florida native, Deborah Sharp does her home state proud with her book Mama Does Time. Mama's home town of Himmarshee is not necessary the touristy part of the state, but she makes news when a body is discovered in the back of her car when she is at the Dairy Queen. When Mace, her middle daughter gets her Mama's phone call, she tries to spring into action, even though she had just settled down to "wanting to see if she could spot any of her ex-boyfriends on Cops."

Now Mama is southern damsel in distress - what is she going to do in jail (besides making friends with her purple haired cellmate)?  With the help of her cousin, the lawyer, Mace gets Mama out and shows the new detective in town (the one from Miami) what chaos really is. Mace and her sisters try to get Mama out of her mess and manage to involve most of the town, including Mama's latest fiance ( a Northerner!), who is wanting to be spouse number five!

Filled with southern humor, quirky characters, and goofy family dynamics, Sharpe takes us along for a roller coaster ride of fun. And there is a pretty good mystery too! I'm looking forward to the sequels! A fun frothy read at its finest...

The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious and Perplexing City

David Lebovitz was a pastry chef for Alice Waters at Chez Panisse. He decided at one point to move to Paris. His adjustment to living in a foreign country became the material for his blog. His book, The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious and Perplexing City is based on some posts from that blog and more.

While Lebovitz offers some lovely recipes and advice on where to go in Paris, the book is really not a travelogue.  It is more of a expat's love letter to his adopted city, even when he thinks it is a wacky place.  Some points of fun: he earns more respect from his neighborhood vendors after it is found out he is a pastry chef, how customer service is non existent in certain shops, giant French supermarkets vs local markets, and the joys of French cheese and chocolate.

Written with gentle humor, Lebovitz encourages the reader to come over to his side of the pond to experience it all for themselves.  Or at least buy some French cheese and chocolate to munch on while reading it! A Francophile's dream and a fun read.

Murder at the MLA

Is it a skewer of academia or is it a mystery? D.J.H. Jones' book Murder at the MLA is a little bit of both.

The setting is at a convention hotel in Chicago. The convention is the yearly gathering of the Modern Language Association. It is an event attended by English Literature professors, English departments looking for graduate candidates, and candidates looking for jobs from across the country.

As the convention begins - there is an accident- a professor falls over the railing into the lobby. But is it murder? But then a hiring group from Wellesley gets poisoned from their coffee and one dies. Are the two deaths connected? When the detectives come in - they realize they need some background in this world of publish or perish. And they enlist an assistant professor to be their guide.

The author does a great job with their characters (although the third person omniscient point of view is occasionally disconcerting - but funny sometimes) and they make the reader care about the characters and you want them to succeed with the case. The author (one doesn't know whether it is a he or a she) manages to make quite a statement or two about the status of English literature trends in teaching, the fact that universities are so willing to use up young academics and toss them when it comes time to get tenure, and how some of the trendy teachers are just plain ridiculous. And that the parents and students are paying tuition for it!

A fun mystery about academics! And some nice details about Chicago. Give it to the English major in your life! A fun read.

Bossypants

Tina Fey's Bossypants is really a series of sketches. Sketches about how she grew up - bit and pieces. Chapters about her parents - bit and pieces. And how Second City, SNL and 30 Rock work - bit and pieces. She gives us a good tale, punches it up with some laughs and moves on the the next topic - which makes this book a very fast read. And an enjoyable one. It really is. She really has a nack for showing her reader that she is just like us - and just lucky.

I think my favorite part of the book - besides the essay on child rearing (The Mother’s Prayer for Its Daughter) which can be found wandering online - is where she tells us how hard it was to break the comedy barriers that were still around by the time she got to Second City. She was part of one of the first casts to have an equal number of men and women on it. Before her cast apparently, they had only needed two women to be funny. As someone who knows several funny women, and has worked and performed with some more, I find that insulting to our gender.

I thought she was very polite about gender politics at SNL. It is obvious she still works with them and is on the NBC Network. But you can tell she is thrilled that sketches with just female members of the cast get on the air. And her chapters about "becoming Sarah Palin" are interesting. She comments how she was never good at doing impressions - mostly because she never 'looked' like anyone famous, and then this happens. She just got lucky.

Lucky my eye! The woman has talent! A very fun read, but I wished it was longer!

Dead Reckoning

Charlaine Harris does it again.  A solid book. Funny thoughts from our girl Sookie. (I really think that is why I can not bear to see the TV show. I just love her inner dialog in the books.) And more trouble than you can shake a stick at.

If you haven't started these -- do it from the beginning. Sookie's life is a roller coaster ride and this title Dead Reckoning just keeps the crazy happening. I do not think that anyone could pick this one up and jump in. But I'm so entrenched in the Sookieverse, maybe I'm blind. 

This title is a 'filler" series title. What I mean by that, is that some longer plot lines are wrapped up, some seem to be just beginning, and of course all heck breaks loose at least once or twice. (Okay - my favorite part of this book  is Sookie planning a for a mjaor vampire fight and a baby shower at the same time!) And then there are those teases of plots that are yet to come... This title may not move the series and the characters along with leaps and bounds, but these books tend to have a lot buried in them that you notice later... We will see.

Great book. Great series. A fun frothy read!