Saturday, April 18, 2015

Great Escapes Book Tours Book Review: Dead Girl Blues



Dead Girl Blues
By Joyce and Jim Lavene
• Genre – Cozy Mystery (PARANORMAL)
When Nashville cop Skye Mertz and her husband, Jacob, are killed in a wreck, Skye is given the opportunity to come back for twenty years to raise her five-year-old daughter, Kate. With her ghostly mother-in-law’s help, Skye hopes to be there until Kate is old enough to take care of herself.
But three years into her twenty-year service to Abraham Lincoln Jones, the man who gave her the extra time, Skye is beginning to think life might have been easier before she died.
Abe asks her to investigate the murder of his sorcerer, Harold the Great, a man who was a victim of too many snakes. And the Life Extended People (LEPs – a nice term for zombies) who work for Abe have begun turning into ghosts and disappearing. Only Lucas, the possibly evil, amnesiac sorcerer who lives with Skye and her family, can save her from being the next victim of the deadly curse.
To make matters more complicated, Skye has found a lead in solving the riddle of her husband’s death. She has never believed Jacob died as a result of the crash, but hasn’t been able to prove it. Many other people have lost their lives in the same lonely stretch of highway that he did three years before. Skye goes against Abe’s express wishes to discover the truth with a crazy man bent on vengeance.

Review: Another great series by my favorite cozy author duo. I don't know how they do it. I really don't. This is book two in the "Taxi For The Dead" series.

This book is more a paranormal mystery. I like to dip my toes in something different every now and then and I don't read much in the paranormal genre anymore, so I thought I'd give this series a go, because I love the authors so much.

I'm glad I did. They prove again that they can write anything.  They do a little bit of paranormal in their Ren Faire Mysteries, but nothing like this.

Skye and Lucas are a great couple and I love Abbie as the ghostly mother in law. Skye is one of Abe's LEPs given 20 years of extra life to raise her daughter and she helps bring in the LEPs when their time is up. (Not all of them come willingly.) She's a zombie Stephanie Plum!

There's a sort of double mystery going on here, maybe even triple. The first one involves Skye finding out who killed Abe's sorcerer. (Abe is the man who turned Skye into the sort of zombie that she is, or rather LEP -life extended people) Then there's the LEPs that are turning to ghosts and draining Abe's powers.  Lastly, she's still trying to figure out what killed her husband Jacob after their car crash.

This is really a different take on a cozy mystery and even Zombies with a few werewolves tossed in. If you haven't read a book by this husband and wife team, you should start with this series, it is one of their best.

Rating: 5 flowers


joycejimAbout The Authors
Joyce and Jim Lavene write award-winning, bestselling mystery fiction as themselves, J.J. Cook, and Ellie Grant. They have written and published more than 70 novels for Harlequin, Berkley, Amazon, and Gallery Books along with hundreds of non-fiction articles for national and regional publications. They live in rural North Carolina with their family.

Author Links
Purchase Link:
Amazon
a Rafflecopter giveaway

4 comments:

Barbara Hawk said...

Loved the first book! Can't wait to read this! Thanks for the opportunity!

kmt1976 said...

Enjoyed the first book greatly. Just started this book and Skye needs a new vehicle quickly!

Unknown said...

Thanks for having us here today on our blog tour!

Unknown said...

Thanks for being here angel and kmt!

 
Blog Design by Use Your Imagination Designs using images from the Tea Time kit and the Saturday Night kit by MK-Designs